Category / Industry collaboration

Yesterday Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust held an away day for its clinical staff to learn more about health research. The event was hosted by the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences on its Lansdowne Campus. The organiser, Dr. Ciarán Newell, a Consultant Nurse Eating Disorders as well as Dorset Healthcare’s Facilitator for Research and Development organised the event to increase research collaborations between Dorset Healthcare and Bournemouth University.

Our guests were offered a very varied programme with many FHSS staff (as well as one of our Psychology colleagues) presenting their own research or research-related services available at the university. We hope this event will lead to further fruitful collaborations between the NHS and the university in the near future.

TIME

SESSION

FACILITATOR

9.30am

Welcome

Dr. Ciarán Newell

9.40am

What research means to me: Patient Research Ambassador (PRA)

Anna Glanville-Hearson

10.10am

Health & Social Care Research at BU: overview

· Strategic Investment Areas

· Departments / Research Centres

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

10.30am

Research at Dorset HealthCare University NHS Trust: an overview

Dr Paul Walters Clinical Lead, R&D

10.50am

Research Design Service & BU Research Support

Prof. Peter Thomas

11.00am

COFFEE BREAK

11.15am

Mixed-methods & qualitative research

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

11.30am

What Bournemouth University Library can offer

Caspian Dugdale

11.50am

Postgraduate Studies at BU

Dr. Sharon Docherty

12.20am

Research into health of BAME communities

Dr. Bibha Simkhada

12.30pm

LUNCH

1.30pm

Trust Research & Development team: how can we help you with your research?

The challenge aims to fund researchers and industry to combine data and real-world evidence from UK health services and create new products and services that diagnose diseases earlier and more efficiently.

Innovate UK and the Medical Research Council, as part of UK Research and Innovation, have up to £17 million to invest in collaborative consortia developing integrated diagnostics. Cancer Research UK has a further £3 million to invest in cancer-related projects.

Summary:

Deadline : 25 September 2019

Eligibility : Businesses of any size may apply, and consortia must include at least 1 NHS or academic partner and 1 SME

A quieter week for HE policy, however, there’s news on the KEF and lots of other relevant content.

STEM for Britain

As a member of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee BU’s early career researchers and PhD and post-doc researchers all have the opportunity for exposure of their work through the annual poster competition. Posters are being accepted for the following areas:

Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Chemistry

Engineering

Mathematical Sciences

Physics

Prizes will be awarded for the posters presented in each discipline which best communicate high level science, engineering or mathematics to a lay audience.

Please share this information with ECR, PhD and PDR colleagues and those who work directly with them. This is a rare opportunity to showcase work within parliament at this level. All the shortlisted posters will be shared during a parliamentary reception in March 2020 and there will be the opportunity to talk about the research directly with policy makers.

The poster competition is open now please contact Lisa Andrews, RDS Research Facilitator, for more details and to enter.

Student mental health has been the subject of a number of reports as students are increasingly declaring mental conditions and reporting issues with stress and poor mental wellbeing. It has been suggested that student mental health is in ‘crisis’.

The proportion of students who disclosed a mental health condition to their university has increased rapidly in recent years.

Surveys of students have found much higher rates of mental ill health than those disclosed to universities. A recent survey found that 21.5% had a current mental health diagnosis and 33.9% had experienced a serious psychological issue for which they felt they needed professional help. Survey responses are confidential and are likely to give a better idea of the full extent of mental ill health.

Many factors have been suggested as contributing to the rise in cases of mental ill health among higher education students – work pressures, moving away from home, financial worries, or more generally higher education institutions are said to be feeling the impact of the rise in metal health conditions among the 16-25 age population.

The effect of mental health issues on students can be serious and can lead to consequences such as: academic failure, dropping out of education, poorer career prospects and in the worst cases suicide.

Concern has been expressed about the availability of support for students with mental health conditions and the response of universities and higher education institutions.

In 2017 Universities UK, published Stepchange Mental health in higher education. Stepchange provides a framework to help higher education providers embed good mental health across all university activities.

Placement Premium

A Chartered Management Institute commissioned survey finds 3 in 4 parents believe that qualifications that combine with work experience and study are the best way to prepare young people for the workplace.

With record numbers of young people going through university clearing, the survey also shows that:

Parents rate degree programmes that combine work and study over traditional university degrees.

Nearly two thirds of parents (64%) favoured a degree apprenticeship with a major company like Rolls-Royce over a degree at Oxford or Cambridge (36%).

Nearly three quarters (73%) rated a degree that combines full-time work with study over a traditional 3 year university degree based on lectures and seminars alone (27%).

71% of parents also wanted all graduates to have the opportunity to develop management, enterprise and leadership skills.

Rob Wall, Head of Policy at CMI said: “Innovations like degree apprenticeships – which bring together work and study, and allow apprentices to apply their learning in the workplace – are hugely attractive to employers. Our survey shows that they are now increasingly popular with parents, with the vast majority rating a degree apprenticeship with a FTSE 100 corporate over a traditional 3 year degree at a top university. Our message to all those young people receiving their GCSE results this week is that, whatever your results and whatever path you take next, developing those employability skills like self-management and leadership will always give you an edge in a competitive jobs market.”

FE Funding Push

The Association of Colleges are capitalising on the recent announcement that there will be an accelerated spending round by the end of September. They have issued a paper to the Treasury and the DfE making recommendations for tertiary education. In headline their proposals cover the full remit of college work and request a one-off cash injection of £1,114m in revenue and £240m in capital. The paper capitalises on the Augar Review which discussed the lower funding rates and investment in FE education. It covers the items you would expect such as a higher funding rate for all FE provision, better pay and status for FE teachers. It also suggests a ten year funding plan for education. A larger adult education budget to support retraining, improve skills and develop lifelong learning (at a one-year cost of £250 million).

Of relevance to HE are the apprenticeship funding reforms they suggest (at a one year cost of £200m).

Increase funding for non-levy employers and for young people. The non-levy budget should increase by £200 million and all 16-to18 year olds should be funded through the education budget to guarantee their training opportunities.

The increase in degree apprenticeship numbers is a concern because these involve high costs and because it appears that obligations previously covered by tuition fees have been shifted onto the apprenticeship budget. It would seem more appropriate for apprenticeships at level 6 and above to be funded from the higher education teaching budget, regulated by the Office for Students and operated with the same rules on equivalent and lower qualifications as loan-supported programmes.

They also suggest a development fund for higher technical education (one year cost of £40m).

For students, it would be simple to offer the same tuition fee cap, student finance rules and teaching grant funding as offered for degree-level study. For colleges there needs to be a modest fund to support set-up costs which precede the relevant income because enrolments take time to build.

On regulating to protect students and employers while maximising impact:

Colleges spend a growing and disproportionate share of their budgets on administration and compliance and account for themselves to two different parts of the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), to the Office for Student (OfS), to Ofsted, to local enterprise partnerships and combined authorities, to the Home Office, to lenders, pension funds and any other funding organisation. Some complexity is unavoidable but there is a case for the DfE group to consider whether there are ways to focus regulation more clearly on activities that benefit students and employers, to cut compliance costs and to place simpler duties on college governing bodies to account for the public investment they receive.

David Hughes, Chief Executive, Association of Colleges, said: After making great efficiencies over the last decade, there is a strong consensus now that colleges need major investment to put them in a position to be able to thrive and from that position to be able to maximise the impact they can have. The UK’s industrial strategy identifies skills as an issue across a range of priority sectors and the need for action to avoid shortages. Without thriving colleges, this priority will not be met.

Total expenditure on 16-19 education fell by 17.5% in real terms between 2010-11 and 2016-17, while the funding allocated to 16-19 education fell by 13% in real terms between 2013-14 and 2017-18.

The funding rate for students aged 16 and 17 in education in 2018-19 has been frozen at £4,000 since 2013-14, while the funding rate for students who are already aged 18 has been frozen at £3,300 since it was cut by 17.5 % in 2014.

The government is currently consulting on ambitions to build a “new generation” of higher technical qualifications at levels 4 and 5 for T-level students to progress onto. The introduction date of 2022 has been set to fit with the first cohort of T-level students, who will start their two-year level 3 qualification in 2020.

Labour’s Education Policies

Recent news has detailed Jeremy Corbyn’s efforts to amalgamate enough support that should the autumn vote of no confidence succeed he may be able to form a temporary caretaker Government. Labour are hoping for an early General Election and Wonkhe have covered all their recent Education related announcements into one blog.

KEF

72% of responses agreed the KEF should be an annual, institutional-level, metrics driven exercise.

The respondents commented on the balance between running a low burden exercise at the expense of losing valuable detail.

Significant themes within the report were noted as:

The (mostly) output metrics do not necessarily capture the quality of knowledge exchange activity

Varied responses on how often the KEF should take place, although the report notes the majority favoured an annual exercise.

Below follow the main points picked out of the KEF report narrative

Clusters The KEF clusters institutions together, BU is in cluster E.

“The conceptual framework underpinning the analysis and the variables and methods employed were broadly well received, with the majority of respondents somewhat agreeing or agreeing with these aspects, and the resulting composition of the clusters. There was less consensus on whether the clusters would help fulfil the stated aims of the KEF (Q6.4), and the purpose of allowing fair comparison. Although a majority agreed to some extent, there was a higher level of ‘disagree’ responses than for Q6.1-6.3.”

“In regard to the overall approach to clustering (Q6.4) it is worth noting that the majority of negative responses were ‘somewhat disagree’. This is borne out by the associated commentary, with the most common response (105 respondents) welcoming the clustering approach, with only 10 respondents making critical comments on the overall concept. Respondents indicating an overall ‘slightly disagree’ or ‘disagree’ tended to be for very specific reasons. For example, while broadly welcoming the concept of clustering they disagreed with the range of variables used. Other more negative responses were driven by consideration of whether clustering helped the KEF meet its aims (and how businesses and other users might use or interpret them), with more agreement on their positive role in enabling fair comparison between HEIs.”

“There were a substantial number of points in the commentary focussing on the descriptions and presentation of the clusters:

There were a significant number of comments relating to the cluster descriptions – e.g. describing a cluster as having HEIs with ‘limited world leading research’ could be seen as negative in itself, and that it may be better to frame cluster descriptions on what the institution does do, rather than what it doesn’t.

Multiple requests to provide a brief introduction into what the clustering is for, how the descriptors work and how the cluster names (which are random letters) were assigned. It was noted that this was particularly important for external audiences.

Approximately 15% of responses suggested clusters may be confusing for businesses and other users or they suggested that there should be flexibility for users to be able to group institutions in different ways that were more relevant to them.

There was some concern that whatever the intent, the clusters will be seen as a hierarchy in their own right (10%).

That there is still too much variation within clusters (although we would argue that the KEF proposals include further steps to normalise for size, and the scaling of metrics mitigates this).

That specialist institutions are difficult to place in clusters, but most respondents making this point stated that this approach was still preferable to not using clustering or a comparable method to aid fair comparison.”

“There were also multiple comments and suggestions on the variables used to create the clusters, including on the role of professional services staff not being represented, concerns that variables were too heavily skewed towards research activities, and that 3* (as well as 4*) REF outputs should be used.

“Overall, there was no clear consensus from the responses received on a course of action that would satisfy all and no appropriate alternative models were proposed that would meet the requirements of providing a means of fair comparison. Given that the concept of clustering was well received for those in the main clusters, it is unlikely the fundamental approach to this aspect of the KEF proposals will change….”

Perspectives and metrics

“For the proposed perspectives and associated metrics, we asked for feedback on both the overall range and balance, and also views on the metrics proposed under each perspective.

A majority agreed that a sufficiently broad range of KE activity was captured (72%), although a sizeable minority of 26% disagreed to some extent”

The range of perspectives were welcome with around 40% of responses agreeing that they broadly captured a sufficient variety of KE activity. However, around 15% of responses felt that the individual metrics within the perspectives were too narrow to adequately capture the full range of KE activities undertaken by HEIs.”

“The majority of recommendations for KE activities that could be considered for inclusion in the KEF fell into four key areas:

Contribution to public policy

International partnerships

Partnerships with SMEs

HEI-HEI collaboration

Other common themes expressed in the commentary related to:

The timing of the HE-BCI review and the subsequent impact on the KEF. …

How the quality and sustainability of partnerships with business can be captured e.g. regular student placements, repeat business, voice of the customer.”

On working with business:

“A significant number of responses considered there was a disconnect between the broad nature of the perspective title ‘Working with business’ and the proposed income metrics. The metrics were considered by over a quarter of respondees to be very narrow, and not reflective of the full breadth of knowledge exchange activities undertaken in HEIs. In particular 15% of respondees felt that income from use of specialist facilities and equipment should be included as a useful indicator of interactions with business.”

“The nature of the metrics as income measures brought feedback across a number of points:

Some argued that income is not an appropriate proxy for impact and does not well reflect the quality of the interactions. A number of alternative metric areas were suggested such as repeat business, length of relationships or nature or number of strategic partnerships.

The opportunities for undertaking consultancy and contract research and the income value of that activity will be impacted by the local economic context, particularly for some types of interactions e.g. with SMEs.

Across all disciplines, but especially in the public and third sectors, it was considered that a significant proportion of knowledge exchange activity is not monetised and so not well reflected in the metrics.

The role of students is seen as significant by about 10% of respondents, either through the close relationships developed with businesses through degree apprenticeships or placement work, or directly by supervised services delivered as part of their course or extra curricula activity.

About a fifth of respondees provided feedback on the use of ‘academic FTE’ as the denominator for two of the metrics. While 4% expressed support for the use of academic FTE to account for the size of the institution, 10% considered it to be misleading to restrict it to academic staff when a signification proportion of knowledge exchange activity is undertaken by professional services staff or students. Some 5% requested a clearer definition of who is included in ‘academic FTE’ and 2% felt that it would be more relevant to restrict it to research active academic staff.”

On local growth and regeneration:

“We recognise that this metric on its own does not sufficiently capture the breadth of activity in this area and therefore have proposed the use of additional narrative. The feedback from respondents verified this view, with over a quarter expressing support for the use of narrative. The primary areas of concern expressed for the proposed metric were:

The metric was considered by over 20% of respondees as unhelpfully focused on income, it was felt that this is a less effective proxy for impact within local growth and regeneration.

Around 14% of respondees noted that the metric was very narrow as a standalone metric and needed to be part of a wider basket of metrics. A further 5% of respondees felt that the metric was too poor to be used at all and suggested that the perspective should be ‘greyed out’ until additional metrics could be identified. It was considered that the forthcoming HESA review of the HE-BCI survey may be an opportunity to find additional metrics. …

Inconsistency of returns to the HE-BCI survey were believed to impact this metric in particular, ….

A small number of respondees felt the use of academic FTE as a denominator was inappropriate, with a wide variety of reasons cited.

A number of alternative or additional metric areas were suggested by respondees:

The investment that individual institutions make to their local areas, either through the local supply chain, direct regeneration investment in cash or in kind was viewed by over 10% of respondees as a helpful addition.

While 9% suggested that activity and income related to local industrial strategies and related government funding such as city deals, regional growth funds or local growth funds should be included.

A small proportion of respondees (4%) also looked to create links to the strategies and action plans being developed by institutions who have signed up to the Civic University Commission’s Civic University Agreements.”

The concentrated nature of income-generating commercialisation activity within relatively few institutions and its ‘lumpy’ nature (i.e. that volumes vary significantly year-to-year) means the metrics in this perspective may not be relevant to some institutions, and that it would be hard for external audiences to draw conclusions from them (18% of respondees).

Whether the proposed three year time series and normalisation by research income was appropriate for measuring spin-out performance, given the long time-lags involved. Would a longer time series of 10+ years be more appropriate?

The time lags between research being undertaken and spin-out creation was seen as particularly problematic for the metric of ‘research resource per spin-out’. Several respondees also expressed concern that given the relative ease of creating a spinout that this metric may create a perverse incentive to incorporate spin-out companies too early, or where a more appropriate exploitation route existed.

This question also elicited specific suggestions for new metrics based on other areas of the HE-BCI collection:

In addition to licensing income, nearly 10% of respondees argued that the numbers of licenses granted (whether or not they generate income) may also give a useful indication of performance. Numbers of free licenses could (subject to a rigorous treatment that differentiated end-user licenses from other forms) indicate active exploitation of IP (the licensee having gone to the effort to enter a formal agreement) where impact rather than income generation was the primary driver.

Other common suggestions focused on proportions of patents or licenses generating income (indicating active exploitation), rates of disclosures, or ratios of disclosures to patents and IP income (indicating effective translation of disclosures).

There was also a group of suggestions for metrics which focused less on income and more on capturing results from enterprise structures and IP exploitation strategies that do not focus on income generation, such as social enterprises, open innovation strategies or open source products and software.”

On public and community engagement

‘Public and community engagement’ received the lowest average score when participants were asked to rate their percentage agreement…while the inclusion of the perspective in the KEF was broadly welcomed, there was also a clear message that the metric did not adequately capture the range of activities undertaken by HEIs in this area.

Around 17% of respondees suggested that the current metric of time per FTE was not adequate to capture performance or quality of the events recorded, with an additional 12% of respondees suggesting that this risked the role of professional services staff being overlooked.

The consistency of reporting in Table 5 of the HE-BCI return (Social, community and cultural engagement: designated public events) was a concern for 15% of respondees, highlighting the need for clearer guidance on how this information should be recorded across the sector.

The inclusion of narrative was welcome, but 10% of respondees raised the concern that it was not assessed and would therefore not be viewed as of equal value to metric element of the perspective.

Additional metrics that were suggested included:

The number of times that university assets are opened up to the community in some way

HEI investment in brokerage

Public involvement in research

Metrics collected by public relations and marketing departments e.g. the number of academics/professional staff blogging on external sites, social media interactions, media appearances by academics, or coverage of research

Number of performances or events and the associated number of attendees.”

Use of Narratives:

The NCCPE concluded that there is strong rationale for adopting and adapting the approach to narrative within the KEF. Whilst the proposed template delivers some effective prompts that elicited useful information, there was considerable variety in the level of specificity and supporting evidence provided in the pilot drafts.

The NCCPE have provided specific recommendations to Research England on how the templates and use of narrative could be improved to draw out more relevant and consistent information. Alongside the consultation responses these recommendations are informing the development of the KEF.

Respondees showed an exceptionally strong preference for the provision of an overarching institutional statement being provided by the HEI with 89% agreeing to some extent (and almost half strongly agreeing). 101. This was echoed through the written responses which expressed the broad view that an overarching narrative would be beneficial and that it should be provided by the institutions themselves. There was also a strong articulation that the local economic context needs to be considered to place knowledge exchange activities in context, and that it may be appropriate for Research England to provide this data in a standardised format

A number of respondees felt that an overarching statement could also be a useful tool to demonstrate an institution’s overall strategic goals in relation the perspectives. This may help mitigate any perceptions of relative ‘poor’ performance in areas that were not of strategic importance to a particular HEI. However, it was recognised that this would be difficult to achieve through the visualisation. Other voices expressed concern that the statements could become marketing tools with little added value.

And finally:We note the concerns expressed in both the consultation and pilot regarding timing of implementation and potential overlaps with the REF and TEF. We will pay regard to this when agreeing implementation timescales.

Other news

Arts rise: The DfE published information on GCSE entries on results day. It highlights that entries to arts subjects have risen by 3.2% to 320,000. The DfE see this as positive new because previously the EBacc was criticised as squeezing these subjects out of the curriculum because of the opportunity to select them was less than other curriculum models. The news sits alongside a 3.7% rise in entries to EBacc subjects and an increase in foreign language entries (particularly Spanish and French). For more detail, including the key stats for other subjects click here.

T levels: The House of Commons Library have one of their helpful briefing papers on T Levels: Reforms to Technical Education which provides an overview of the proposals to reform the technical education system.

Student Debt Sanctions: the CMA have taken action causing the University of Liverpool to change their student debt penalty policy. They will no longer issue academic sanctions – such as the as the removal of library or email access – for students who have debts which are unrelated to their fees. Susan Lapworth, Director for Competition and Registration, at the Office for Students, said: “We welcome today’s announcement that, following CMA action, the University of Liverpool has formally committed to drop academic sanctions for students with debts, for example for accommodation costs, that are not related to their tuition fees. The fair treatment of students is important to us as a regulator. All universities and other higher education providers should be mindful of today’s CMA announcement and ensure that their debt collection policies comply with consumer law. Our own regulatory framework sets out the need for universities to demonstrate they are complying with consumer protection law, and we will continue to support the important work of the CMA on these issues.”

AI job displacement scheme: On Tuesday new Education Minister, Kemi Badenoch, announced an extension in the roll out of a pilot programme aiming to help adults whose jobs may change due to new technologies – such as automation and AI – to retrain and get on the path to a new career. The Get Help to Retrain digital service will now be rolled out to the West Midlands and the North East following success in Liverpool City during the summer.

Market Signalling: HEPI have a new blog exploring the marketisation of HE alongside the Augar Review and institutional autonomy.

Unconditional Admissions: The most effective and fairest admissions system continues to be debated this week. A provocative Wonkhe article makes the barest nod to grades asking what if all university offers were unconditional? The comments at the end are well worth a read too as sector colleagues suggest other alternatives and admissions tweaks, primarily moving away from the overreliance on A level grades. And The Guardian have an article which suggests social class is a barrier to good A level/exam performance.

PQA: Post qualification admissions. Mary Curnock Cook, ex-CEO of UCAS, explains the factors that made her turn from determined to implement post qualification admissions to remaining with the current system.

NEETS: Office for National Statistics published the quarterly stats on 16-24 year olds who are classified as NEET (not in education, employment or training).

There were 792,000 young people in the UK who were NEET; this number increased by 28,000 from January to March 2019 and was up 14,000 when compared with April to June 2018.

The percentage of all young people in the UK who were NEET was 11.5%; the proportion was up 0.4 percentage points from January to March 2019 and up 0.3 percentage points from April to June 2018.

Of all young people in the UK who were NEET, 41.6% were looking for, and available for, work and therefore classified as unemployed; the remainder were either not looking for work and/or not available for work and therefore classified as economically inactive.

Schools Funding: One of Boris’ campaigning objectives was his pledge to increase the minimum per pupil funding level for English schools – this House of Commons Insight Guide has an interactive mechanism which checks which schools within a constituency area will see an increase against the £4k (primary) and £5k (secondary) proposed thresholds.

The next wave of major industrial and societal challenges to receive investment through the government’s modern Industrial Strategy have been confirmed.

The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund brings together the UK’s world-leading research base with our best businesses to transform how we live, work and move around. It will put the UK in the best position to take advantage of future market opportunities.

In addition last month the Government confirmed an investment in Quantum Technologies – a £153 million Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund which will be matched by industry with over £200 million of investment expected from the private sector.

The big news this week was the defeat of the Government’s wishes to prevent an amendment which aims to hinder the prorogation of Parliament. Chris Skidmore made what may be his last speech as Universities Minister. Few HE reports were issued and the main thrust this week focussing on skills within industry including apprenticeships and the launch of the national retraining scheme. Have a lovely weekend, refuel and shore yourself up ready for Parliamentary changes next week!

Parliament

When we write next week we’ll have a new Government with (probably) a swift Ministerial reshuffle. The media has few hints about who will get what job, aside from some key Conservatives jostling for ministerial position.

Hints include:

Matt Hancock challenging Boris’ stance on energy drinks – Boris wants to remove the sugar tax, Matt want to ban the drinks. Is it enough to boot him out of the Health Secretary role despite his declaring for Boris when he removed himself from the leadership race?

Gove (Environment Secretary) has stated Boris would make a ‘great Prime Minister’ and on both Boris and rival Hunt he states: “We can trust them both to do the right thing on every critical issue” whilst warning that time is running out to stop climate change. On this note he described Boris as having been “passionate about the environment for decades… [upon first meeting Boris Gove recalls that Boris] described himself to me without prompting as a passionately green Tory and in every role he has had he has championed the environment”. The media is awash with stories that this is Gove’s pitch to remain as Environment Minister. When Gove was asked if he wished to stay on in the Ministerial spot he statedhe had merely been giving in the speech a “personal indication of the way which I would hope policy to develop, whoever does this job”.

Amber Rudd has performed a political U turn and dropped her opposition to a no-deal Brexit. The Spectator claims she is a ‘reasonable bet’ for Ministerial office. Interesting, especially as she is backing Hunt for PM.

Plus Justine Greening, Sam Gyimah, local Sir Oliver Letwin, Sarah Newton, Minister Margot James all showed their stripes this week and voted against a 3-line whip in the amendment aiming to hinder Boris’ potential prorogation of Parliament (more on this below).

Similarly four ministers failed to ingratiate themselves when they abstained on the amendment vote – Rory Stewart, long term Cabinet member Greg Clark, current Chancellor Philip Hammond (long rumoured to already have been off the list anyway) and Justice Secretary David Gauke.

And Chris Skidmore gave a speech which he said might be his last as Universities Minister –although he has also said he would like to stay.

Change is inevitable. Boris (assuming it is him) has said all his Ministers must support a no deal Brexit.

The Guardian has this to say on the Cabinet spots: Johnson is adamant that he has not been offering jobs to anyone before entering No 10, as appears likely to happen next Tuesday. He has even declined to say that Hunt will be allowed to stay in the cabinet. It remains to be seen whether he will forgive Gove for his betrayal in 2016, although senior Eurosceptics believe he will extend the hand of friendship with a cabinet post.

Meanwhile the Lords are trying to safeguard against Boris prorouguing Parliament (assuming Boris becomes PM). In an amendment to legislation the Lords defeated the Government by 272 votes to 169. While we have seen various opposition and backbencher parliamentary challenges aiming to prevent no deal or the prorogation this is the first real success.

Last week former PM John Major spoke out and threatened action against Boris’ refusal to rule out closing down parliament to pass no deal. This week it appears the Lords may have been tipped into action by Boris’ team suggesting that if Boris becomes PM he is considering holding a Queen’s Speech to set out his legislative plans at the start of November – such a move would usually close down Parliament for the preceding two weeks – meaning MPs would be unable to vote against a no-deal in the run-up to the crucial Brexit deadline.

On Thursday afternoon the Commons debated the final stage of the Northern Ireland Bill (considering the Lords above amendment) – this is the legislation the amendments are being made to hindering the prorogation of Parliament for Brexit. Despite a Government 3-line whip the MPs voted to uphold the Lords amendment and this amendment blocks suspension of Parliament between 9 October and 18 December unless a Northern Ireland Executive is formed. It the NI Executive is not in place MPs must be recalled to debate Northern Ireland issues (of which Brexit is the key current issue) at this point. Notable for their vote against their party whip are: Justine Greening, Sam Gyimah, local Sir Oliver Letwin, Sarah Newton and the Minister Margot James who promptly resigned her DCMS ministerial post. Twelve other conservative MPs voted against the Government’s wishes. Four cabinet ministers abstained: International Development Secretary Rory Stewart, Business Secretary Greg Clark, Chancellor Philip Hammond, and Justice Secretary David Gauke. Leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt ‘accidentally’ missed the vote and took to Twitter to say he would have voted based on Government wishes. 30 other Conservative MPs abstained, including local MP Simon Hoare. Universities Minister Chris Skidmore and Education Secretary Damian Hinds voted with the Government’s wishes. See the listings here for the full who’s who details on the votes.

The amendment places another road block against the prorogation of parliament. However, the power to request the Queen to prorogue remains with the PM so it could still happen. What is most interesting is that the Government’s defeat in this vote shows the potential for Conservatives to rebel and vote down the next PM in support of a Labour motion of no confidence. However, this would be an extreme action for Conservative MPs as doing so would precipitate a general election with the risk of MPs losing their constituency seats and potentially Labour (or a coalition group) forming a new Government. Many rebels have been suggested that they would stop short of this.

WP Speech from Universities Minister

Universities Minister Chris Skidmore spoke on widening access and participation on Monday. He visited Birkbeck University which has a big widening participation agenda and classes are held during the evenings only. The Minister visited because he wanted to learn from Birkbeck’s flexible, ‘step-on, step-off’ approach to higher education for the future. And that’s why we’re expanding the range of options available to students today. The Minister states the Government’s agenda is all about students making choices, which are best for them. He goes on to highlight key points:

We are putting extra resources into higher technical education and apprenticeships. So, as well as offering a range of world-leading higher education courses, we’d like to ensure that vocational and technical training options of equal quality are available across the entire country, so that all 18-year-olds are able to select the pathway that best suits their aspirations and potential. But…higher level education is not just for 18-year-olds. Here…we see the ultimate in flexible teaching models combined with high impact research, which all goes to show that part-time and mature students are right to expect the highest quality experience and outcomes.

This government recognises the importance of studying part-time and later in life, and the huge range of benefits it can bring to individuals, employers and the wider economy. We acknowledge there has been a 57% decline in the number of students in part-time higher education since 2010-11 – many of whom will be mature. And we recognise the need to rectify this since, as the world of work changes, it is important people are able to retrain and reskill as they need, so they don’t get left behind. According to research by the Centre for Social Justice, it is expected that anywhere between 10 and 35% of the UK workforce will need to reskill in the next 20 years.

The Minister goes on to detail the changes aimed to support part time and mature students – access to maintenance loans and access to loans for STEM courses for ELQs (students who already have a degree or equivalent level qualification). But we know we still need to do more – both to encourage students to study part-time and later in life, and to encourage all higher education providers to develop their offers to appeal to those students. The Minister mentions the OfS’ work on Access and Participation Plans and how institutions plan to tackle barriers and problems for mature students.

In 2018, for the first time ever, over 20% of English 18-year-olds living in the lowest participation neighbourhoods entered higher education. And the data just released on 2019 applications shows further significant progress… But, we cannot rest on our laurels…we’re still not getting the most disadvantaged students into the best possible courses for them. Our widening participation data shows White boys on free school meals have the lowest progression rates to higher education. And there are still significant regional differences to address across the country.

To make sure our efforts to improve access and participation are as effective as they can be, we need to be willing to look at the system as a whole, and to take a whole-system approach to outreach and widening participation activities…we cannot offer just generic support. What we need is support tailored to different student groups – including commuter students, postgraduate students, mature part-time students, international students, care leavers and estranged students, disabled students, students from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) backgrounds, and students from the poorest parts of our society. And let’s not forget the need to support the inclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT+) students…Inclusion needs to be at the heart of all institutional policy. Because it is only when inclusion becomes mainstream that we will deliver a sea change in attitudes – putting an end to the old myth that university is only for a certain type of person, from a certain type of background.

That’s why I welcome the review of admissions being undertaken by the Office for Students (OfS)…Experimenting with contextual admissions is one part of this. Contextual admissions involve universities reflecting on the circumstances within which students’ attainment has been achieved; for example, the nature and overall performance of the school they attend, their socio-economic background, or perhaps a difficult personal situation. Most universities already do this to some extent, but I would like the most selective, in particular, to be more ambitious in making contextual offers to recognise the untapped potential that many disadvantaged students have. There is good evidence to show that students who have had offers reduced by several grades can make excellent progress at university, provided the right support has been put in place for them.

Ensuring we [institutions] are using the right data, measuring the right things, and using data in the right way is a key priority for me

The Minister went on to state a reformed student information resource would be launched in the autumn including LEO data, the innovative digital tools developed through the Open Data Competition and the OfS review of Unistats. The UCAS new student hub to enable applicants more personal searches and advice was mentioned too.

And the OfS is promoting and supporting greater and faster progress to support disadvantaged students…all [HEI’s] need to be able to access high quality evidence of what works to enable them to make a step change in closing the gaps between students – in access, experience, and outcomes. This is why the new [OfS] Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes (TASO) is so important.

Unpaid internships are mentioned too: let’s not forget the work we can be doing to support graduates into the world of work at the end of their studies… we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to the fact that it is at this point of the year that some students and fresh graduates fall prey to unpaid internships to gain experience and get a foot on the jobs ladder.Recent research by the Sutton Trust showed that the minimum cost of carrying out an unpaid internship here in London is £1,019 per month. So, we should be doing everything we can to stop these work placements being a privilege of the rich and making careers support more visible on campus to steer students in the right direction.Employability needs to be weaved into the system – not just by careers teams but also by academics, who equally have a role to play in making students aware of the transferable skills they are gaining from their higher education. It’s obviously not great news when almost half (49%) of young people aged between 17 and 23 believe their education has not prepared them for the world of work – as revealed by a survey from the CBI in November last year.

And, as this may well be my last higher education speech as Universities Minister, I want to thank the sector for all I have seen and for all it is doing in continuing to make our universities and colleges accessible, inclusive and open to all.

Degree Apprenticeships

Universities UK has launched the Future of Degree Apprenticeships report arguing the qualification provides significant opportunities for employers to diversify their workforce, increasing the opportunities available to young people, and widening employers’ talent pools. It suggests that the link between apprenticeship policy and the Industrial Strategy needs to be strengthened to ensure provision in key sectors can flourish. This is in line with the recent Government position on focussing degree apprenticeships into specified key sectors and stemming the (expensive) significant growth in higher level apprenticeships which has displaced some lower level provision (see 12 July policy update for more on this). UUK suggest that encouraging development of more level 4 and level 5 apprenticeships and progression pathways will bring flexibility and is a direct appeal to the Government during the Higher Technical Education Reform consultation period.

The report recommendations sound familiar:

The Government should lead a campaign to promote the benefits of degree apprenticeships to employers and the public, including better careers information and guidance at an earlier age in schools, and the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) should make the application system for degree apprenticeships as straightforward as it is for undergraduate degrees.

The Government should invest in initiatives to support social mobility, lifelong learning, and growth in degree apprenticeships among underrepresented groups.

The system should develop to meet current and future demand for higher level skills in areas such as digital technology, management, and public services, to boost regional economies.

Make it easier for employers to include a degree within their apprenticeships where they see it adding value to their business and to their apprentices, and streamline processes and reduce unnecessary costs in the system.

Professor Quintin McKellar CBE, VC, University of Hertfordshire stated: Degree apprenticeships provide an opportunity for employers to work closely with universities to develop high-quality programmes that meet key skills needs, fill occupations that are experiencing shortages and deliver them in an innovative and flexible way. They provide opportunities for employers to recruit talented staff with potential, and to develop and upskill existing staff.

Industry Skills Focus

The new Peterborough University has surveyed employers in its quest to directly produce graduates which serve national shortages but particularly fit the skills needs of local employers. Retaining graduate talent in the local area is another key priority. The survey is interesting because it provides feedback from employers on what they see as the most useful degree programmes.

The most popular areas were business, IT and digital, and sustainability skills. These areas of learning were judged to have been favoured because of their general importance to a range of business sectors.

Employers also said that skills in mechanical and structural engineering, mathematics, science and certain health and social care skills were in demand now, and would continue to be so in the future.

Newer and rapidly progressing technology featured strongly in the responses, with artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and software development highlighted as likely to be in significant demand in the future.

Sustainability, primary environmental management and the circular economy were also identified as areas where skills will be needed in the future.

(Note: employers selected their most useful degree programmes from a slightly limited range, based on what Peterborough is proposing to offer.)

Interesting for the Government’s achievement of the Research Development target is that 83% of the industry respondents stated they would use the university’s research functions with manufacturing, advanced manufacturing and materials companies the most enthusiastic about the prospect.

Peterborough Mayor, James Palmer, said: We have always said that this university will be delivery and should engage with the local business community from development through to operation in order to turn out the kinds of technical skills needed in our local economy. Not only that, but the way skills are delivered is also important, and we can see from the survey that courses which involve work placement or work-based study were revealed to be very popular…We need this university to help retain and attracted talented people to the local area, to drive up the levels of aspiration and to offer a secure, proven educational pathway to better life chances, fulfilling careers and the skills that will be in demand in the 21st Century economy.

Councillor John Holdich, Leader of Peterborough City Council and Deputy Mayor of the Combined Authority said: Our aspiration is for a university for Peterborough which is rooted in the needs of the local economy and supplying the skills demanded by local employers. This in turn will help our young people into well-paid, secure jobs fit for the rapidly evolving 21st Century workplace. Our employers have told us quite clearly what skills they need and the industries likely to prosper in future years which will now be used to shape the curriculum to be offered by the university.

National Retraining Scheme

The DfE have launched a National Retraining Scheme to support people whose jobs are at risk to adapt to technological change. Current figures suggest that 35% of jobs will change due to automation within the next 20 years. The scheme is starting in the Liverpool City Region with help provided through a new digital service Get Help to Retrain. It aims to support those at risk to identify their existing skills, explore local job opportunities and where to go to find training courses to gain the skills they need to progress. As the scheme is available through an online digital method we hope those needing the support do have sufficient digital literacy to access the service.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds said:

“Technologies like AI and automation are transforming the way we live and work and bringing huge benefits to our economy, but it also means that jobs are evolving and some roles will soon become a thing of the past.

“The National Retraining Scheme will be pivotal in helping adults across the country whose jobs are at risk of changing to gain new skills and get on the path to a new, more rewarding career.

“This is big and complex challenge, which is why we are starting small, learning as we go, and releasing each part of the scheme only when it’s ready to benefit its users

You can read the DfE written ministerial statement on National Retraining Scheme here.

Student Loans Company

You may recall the effectiveness of the Student Loans Company was questioned in 2018 following high profile resignations, their use of social media to determine the estrangement status of students, and the revelation of concerning levels of poor mental health within the workforce.

Universities Minister, Chris Skidmore issued a Written Ministerial Statement on the Tailored Review of the Student Loans Company stating the organisation remained relatively fit for purpose, despite significant operational challenges which include high turnover of staff, and is meeting the majority of its performance targets.

On moving forward the Minister states: The SLC’s own Transformation Programme seeks to address some of the issues and the Tailored Review provides additional and complementary recommendations. The Department for Education is committed to working with the SLC and other stakeholders to develop and implement an action plan to take forward all 39 recommendations.

Parental financial top up

Which? have released findings revealing the scale of parental support for children studying at university. In a survey of 846 parents of both current and prospective undergraduate students, a quarter admitted to cutting back on big expenses, such as holidays.

More than eight in ten parents of current students said they were funding their child in some way while they were studying.

Half of parents said that the overall cost of university was more than they expected and it caught them off guard.

Some parents took a second job to cover their child’s university expenses. Two thirds of parents manage the extra costs through their normal employment pay levels whereas a quarter fund the child through their savings. Two in five parents state they had to cut down on their day to day spending, not just luxuries such as taking holidays.

When asked what expenses they were helping to cover, parents of current students listed accommodation, bills and food (56%), study materials (37%), outings and hobbies (28%), and even tuition fees (10%).

Yet one fifth of parents stated they didn’t know exactly what their child was spending their additional top up money on

The survey states parents of current undergraduate students in our survey said they are putting their hand in their pocket to the tune of £360 per month, on average.

A separate Which? survey to students found nearly half of respondents underestimated the price of accommodation and course expenses.

Which? use the news article to highlight the range of student finance options available and to urge parents of younger children to use the calculators and tools to begin financially preparing in advance of their child commencing university.

Graduate Regional Earnings

The DfE has released the LEO data detailing regional findings in HE graduates earnings.

Almost half of all graduates residing in the same region as their HE provider 5 years after graduation. If a graduate now lives outside of the region of their provider they are most likely to have moved to London.

Some of the movement away from provider region will be graduates returning to their home region. One year after graduation a very high proportion of graduates (82%) are in the same current region as their original home region (43.7% who studied in the same region and therefore never left their home region and 38.3% who chose to study in a different region and subsequently returned.)

Graduate earnings are highest in London but graduates earn more, on average, than non-graduates in all regions of England with the gap in pay relatively similar across the country but greatest in absolute terms in London (around £5,000) and in percentage terms in the South West (around 22%). The report acknowledges that the regional itself has a significant effect on earnings.

Education Committee funding report

The Education Committee has published the report from their inquiry into school and college funding. It calls on the Government to fix the broken education funding system, commit to a multi-billion cash injection for schools and colleges and bring forward a strategic ten-year education funding plan.

See the report for all the school related findings; here we focus on the key points relevant to FE.

The report shows that further education has been hardest hit, with post-16 funding per student falling by 16% in real terms over the past decade.

The capital funding landscape is becoming increasingly concerning. The Department must make the strongest possible case to the Treasury for a multi-billion pound funding increase in the next spending review, and ensure this is aligned with the requirements for a ten-year plan.

The continued underfunding of post-16 education is no longer justifiable. These budget pressures are the result of political decisions that have had enormous impacts on young people’s educational opportunities and undermined attempts to tackle social justice. The Department must make the case to the Treasury for a post-16 core funding rate raise from £4,000 to at least £4,760 per student, rising in line with inflation. This is needed to ensure pupil services can be provided at minimum acceptable levels, and prevent institutions from having to cut back still further on the breadth of subjects offered.

It is clear that Pupil Premium is being used to plug holes in school budgets rather than being directed at disadvantaged children. The Department should also introduce a 16–19 Pupil Premium scheme. The Department should additionally develop a data-sharing system to ensure FE institutions can identify disadvantaged students automatically.

A ten-year plan for education funding is essential. It would provide schools, colleges and the Department with much needed strategic direction and financial certainty. The short-termism and initiative-itis that characterises the Department’s current approach cannot afford to continue.

Rt Hon Robert Halfon MP, Chair of the Education Committee, said:

“Education is crucial to our nation’s future. It is the driver of future prosperity and provides the ladder of opportunity to transform the life chances of millions of our young people. If it is right that the NHS can have a ten-year plan and a five-year funding settlement, then surely education, perhaps the most important public service, should also have a ten-year plan and a long-term funding settlement.

Recess

Parliament will enter recess shortly after the new Prime Minister is announced. We’ll issue a policy update next Friday 26 July, then there will be a break for a few weeks followed by a bumper edition catching you up with the summer news.

Consultations

Don’t forget! – There’s still time to response to BU’s internal consultation gathering colleagues view on transparency and openness in health and social care research to inform our response to the HRA Make it Public consultation.

We focus on the interesting set of reports released as people clear their desks before their summer holidays.

Learning gain

The OfS have published evaluations of the various learning gain projects that have been running for some time. The OfS website is very clear “The report below is independent research which we have commissioned. As such, it does not necessarily reflect the views or official position of the OfS.” You will recall that one reason for HEFCE setting up these projects was to see if a learning gain measure could be created for the TEF. The answer would seem to be “no” although given the disclaimer, that might not stop them having a go.

Learning gain can be defined as the change in knowledge, skills, work-readiness and personal development, as well as enhancement of specific practices and outcomes in defined disciplinary and institutional contexts.

embedding measures in curriculum design is the most effective approach for collecting data for measuring learning gain

Pilots of standardised tests carried out during the projects have not proven to be robust and effective measures of learning gain due to challenges of student engagement, differential scores across socio-demographic characteristics, subject differences and use of data.

Contextual factors such as subject-level differences, institution type and student characteristics differences impact the transferability of measures of learning gain. These differences should be considered when designing and selecting learning gain measures; when analysing and presenting findings. Mediating effects need to be considered.

A one-size-fits-all measure of learning gain (modelled on the NMMLGP questionnaire) should be abandoned as it holds minimal value for the majority of students and is not an influential construct in their present decision-making concerning either choice of institution or impact on the curriculum.

Students’ perceptions of learning gain need further exploration in order to move beyond what are acknowledged as impressionistic findings reported here, which are bound by proportionality constraints.

The sector needs to consider whose interests are best served by the measurement of learning gain. The evidence gathered here from participating providers and their students indicates that there is a dichotomous view of learning gain: either as a marker of institution positioning within a market-oriented system; or as a process of progression throughout the student journey. The two things are not necessarily synonymous.

For higher education providers

All learning gain work needs to be related to students’ own context and clearly embedded at local level within the subject or disciplinary area. Engagement is also highly dependent on whether any initiatives are promoted by trusted sources such as course tutors, rather than unfamiliar contacts.

Providers should consider developing a repertoire of approaches, as part of a learning gain toolkit, which can be accessed by students as part of a flexible and adaptable process underpinned by student choice rather than normative comparison. Providers are encouraged to also review the findings of the overall evaluation of the learning gain Pilot Projects for approaches which are most suited to their local contexts.

“HELGA set out to explore whether administrative data could be used to create a proxy measure for learning gain. The project has experimented with different techniques, considered different outcomes that could be a proxy for learning gain and different source of data that could be used. Ultimately, the project has developed two methods for measuring value-added in higher education for a subset of the undergraduate population.

The two measures have produced different results in their measure of value-added and there is no straightforward way of evaluating which is the most accurate.

It should be noted that the ‘value-added’ measured is the difference between the ‘expected’ degree outcomes for students at an institution based on prior attainment (and other student and course characteristics in the case of the multilevel model) and the actual degree outcomes. The measure does not explain what this difference might be caused by. As mentioned in Section 2.3, there is concern about the comparability of degree classifications across institutions. This raises a question of the suitability of this value-added measure for comparing institutions.

Neither methodology should be used further without additional sensitivity analyses and serious thought as to what is really being measured and whether it is fair to measure institutional performance in terms of value-added based on the restricted population used.

At the outset of HELGA, it was known that it would never be possible to create a single measure of learning gain, encompassing all of the different elements that are understood to make up learning gain. It has necessarily focused on cognitive gain only, although some thought was given to using NSS metadata to measure non-cognitive learning gain, but this was unsuccessful. However, this does not mean that this could not be useful for measuring value-added, but it should be made clear that it should not be adopted to produce a single measure of learning gain”

Grade Inflation

The proportion of first-class honours degrees awarded has increased from 16 per cent to 29 per cent between 2010-11 and 2017-18.

The OfS has used statistical modelling to account for factors including entrance qualifications and student characteristics which may influence attainment. When accounting for these factors, they find that 13.9 percentage points’ worth of first class degree attainment remains “unexplained”.

In total, 94 per cent of the 148 universities and other higher education providers included in the analysis demonstrated a statistically significant unexplained increase in the proportion of first-class degrees awarded in 2017-18 compared to 2010-11.

The report updates data from a report issued in December 2018. Since that report, universities have collectively announced plans to act together to curb grade inflation via the work of the UK Standing Committee for Quality Assessment.

Commenting on the report, Susan Lapworth, director of competition and registration at the Office for Students, said:

‘Worries about grade inflation threaten to devalue a university education in the eyes of employers and potential students. So it is essential we regain and maintain public confidence in the reliability of degree classifications.

‘This data shows a further increase in both the rate of first-class degrees awarded, and the proportion of those awards. These increases cannot be fully explained by the factors we have taken into account in our analysis.

‘The performance shown in the new data pre-dates our call for the sector to take action on grade inflation, so we would not expect to see the impact of such actions in today’s report.

‘There are, though, positive signs that the higher education sector has begun to tackle this issue. We welcome the steps taken by the UK Standing Committee for Quality Assessment and the positive response from universities to a recent consultation on the steps universities should take to demonstrate that standards are secure. We recognise that change will take time, but it remains absolutely crucial that students, graduates and the general public can be assured that the value of a degree is maintained. That is why concerted, focused, and sector-wide action is so important.

‘Following today’s publication, the OfS will be contacting those universities and providers with the most significant unexplained increases in degree classifications. We will ask them to provide further information to help us understand how they account for these increases. In seeking this additional information we recognise that there are factors that could explain the increases – for example improvements in learning and teaching – that we have not been able to measure in our analysis.

‘Given the significant public scrutiny of degree standards we want to understand how universities have assured themselves that they have, and continue to, apply consistent standards. Doing so will help ensure that the degrees that students work so hard for continue to enjoy public confidence.’

The use of the word “unexplained” (again) is shocking given that it means “unexplained by prior attainment and social advantage”. Inevitably this has been picked up in the media and by the Education Secretary.

“Education Secretary Damian Hinds warned against “unfair practices”. Mr Hinds said that if universities were giving many more top degrees without a legitimate reason, it was unfair on those who had studied to the same standard in previous years. “We owe it to the hard-working students and institutions who play by the rules to stamp out this unfair practice,” said the education secretary. “Today’s figures are disappointing and risk compromising the public trust in the high standards of our universities,” he said.”

Wonkhe point out the escalation of threat level here: “Back in December, he said “I am urging universities to tackle this serious issue and have asked the Office for Students to deal firmly with any institution found to be unreasonably inflating grades” – so this feels like threat inflation to us.”

The OfS seem to be totally unaware of the damage that their choice of language may be doing. In a blog, Susan Lapworth, the Director of competition and registration at the OFS, says about the plan to follow up with universities (emphasis added);

“To ensure that all universities, colleges and other registered providers are playing their part in maintaining the standard of degrees, we are likely to write to those providers that held degree awarding powers in 2010-11 and where the data show the most significant increases in the percentage of first class degrees awarded between 2010-11 and 2017-18. We’re focusing on providers with:

a statistically significant increase in the unexplained percentage of first class degrees awarded in a single year, or

a statistically significant overall increase in the unexplained percentage of first class degrees awarded between 2010-11 and 2017-18.

We will ask them to provide further information to help us understand how they account for these increases. We want to understand, for example, whether a provider has made recent changes to the way it calculates degree classifications, or whether it can point to other evidence – such as investment in staffing, teaching, services or facilities – that would credibly account for the ‘unexplained’ increase. We are also interested in the steps governing bodies have taken to ensure that academic governance arrangements are adequate and effective.

In seeking this additional information, we are not implying that the trends we can see in the published data indicate any form of wrongdoing from these providers – we are trying to understand better the reasons for performance that will be subject to public scrutiny and so are focusing our attention on those providers with the biggest unexplained increases. Given the significant public scrutiny of degree standards we want to understand how providers have assured themselves that they continue to apply consistent standards.

Doing so is essential to maintaining public confidence in degrees.”

General Election?

There has been little to say on Brexit recently because of the speculation and posturing of the Conservative leadership race. The news is all about what the two candidates might actually do (rather than what they say they will do as some promises may turn out to be completely unachievable if the EU or Parliament don’t play ball). The Conservatives, despite bitter Brexit infighting, are keen to retain power and remain in Government, avoiding an election at all costs. However, there has been increasing talk of how a general election may now be inevitable. There is a good article in Politics Home House magazine which explains the election scenarios.

Admissions

UCAS released their analysis of all full time undergraduate applications (made by end June 2019) noting a new record as almost 4 in 10 young people apply to university. Overall the number of young applications has increased by 1%, an additional 2,600 people, (despite the 1.9% fall in the young UK population). Across the UK figures are:

39.5% of all 18 year olds in England submitted a UCAS application, up from 38.1% at the same point last year;

The global appeal of UK higher education has never been clearer, with record, demographic beating application rates in England and Wales, and the steep rise in international applications, especially from China.

Today’s analysis shows how attractive undergraduate study continues to be for young people, although university isn’t the only route on offer. Our survey insight shows that around a quarter of students are interested in apprenticeships as an alternative option.

Higher Technical Reform

A vision for Higher Technical Education to be a prestigious choice that delivers the skills employers need, encourages more students to continue studying after A levels or T levels and attracts workers of all ages looking to upskill and retrain.

The starting point for reform is to raise the prestige of Higher Technical Education and strengthen its value to employers by putting their needs and quality first. Improving quality now – to demonstrate the value of higher technical qualifications – will lead to increased uptake of Higher Technical Education in the future.

To do this we a new system is proposed to make clear which higher technical qualifications provide the skills that employers want. This will be delivered through the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education signalling which qualifications deliver the knowledge, skills, and behaviours set out in employer-led national standards. This will help qualifications at this level command the confidence of students and employers alike.

Alongside this the Government intent to work with the Office for Students to demonstrate the quality of providers, so there is more high-quality provision delivered across higher and further education, including through our flagship employer-led National Colleges and Institutes of Technology.

The Government aims to make Higher Technical Education a positive and more popular choice by raising awareness and understanding of the new suite of Institute-approved qualifications in colleges and universities, and among potential students and employers.

This is very interesting in its own right, but also because of the direction of travel.

29 We will create a clear set of signals that will enable employers and learners to easily identify the best qualifications with national labour market relevance. We want to incentivise providers to gravitate towards approved qualifications rather than those that have not met the Institute’s quality requirements. This will tilt the playing field towards qualifications which have been identified by panels of employers as delivering the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed for an occupation.

30 Qualifications approved by the Institute would be clearly identified through a single name or kitemark. ….

31 Approved qualifications will therefore clearly stand out as being high-quality, labour market relevant, and having national currency. These benefits will enhance the offer and credibility of even those existing qualifications that have a relatively good level of employer awareness.

In addition, we know it will be very important to ensure that HTE is properly funded. Funding will also form an important incentive for Awarding Bodies to submit their qualifications for approval and discourage provision of rival qualifications that have not been approved by the Institute. The Post-18 Review panel has recommended that only approved HTQs should be entitled to the same tuition fee support and teaching grant, and equivalent maintenance support, as level 6 qualifications. We want to ensure there are clear incentives to deliver reformed qualifications in the future, and we will consider this as part of the ongoing Spending Review and the government’s response to the Post-18 Review.

We want to ensure that the very best providers are delivering our approved high-quality HTQs, whilst also considering how providers could specialise, or adjust their offer to address local skills needs. The Post-18 Review has recommended additional capital funding, for FE colleges, with a particular focus on growing specialist HTE provision in specific colleges. We will consider these recommendations, and develop our plans in more detail, as part of the Spending Review.

We want the reformed higher technical offer to be the best it can be. We therefore propose taking the requirement to register with the OfS a step further, and to develop with the OfS an additional set of ongoing registration conditions specifically for higher technical provision (technical conditions). Providers would be required to meet these technical conditions, in addition to the general ongoing registration conditions that are applicable to all providers, to be able to deliver the approved HTQs with access to relevant student finance for courses leading to those HTQs, and to be eligible for any additional public funding.

We expect this to be a rigorous process that would specifically assess and signal the quality of a provider’s higher technical education provision. Criteria for this would:

Specifically indicate high-quality higher technical provision by expanding on the key elements already assessed by OfS as part of the registration process, such as:

Suitably qualified and experienced teachers with current, relevant occupational and industry experience and expertise, as well as high quality pedagogical skills. Leaders have the capacity and ability to ensure provision is sustainable and retains a clear focus on quality

Strong links with employer networks, thus ensuring the knowledge, skills and behaviours being delivered are valued by, and relevant to, employers who are engaged and investing in training; and

Learning environments that provide access to facilities and equipment that are reflective of the workplace, including industry-relevant, up-to-date equipment.

Draw from the IoT assessment process, which uses a range of criteria including evidence of support for regional and national economic growth; employer engagement; relevance to occupational skills needs; and quality industry relevant teaching.

67 The panel has also recommended that additional support and capital funding should be provided to grow capacity for, and ensure, high-quality technical provision, and that quality indicators could identify how best to allocate that funding. This could mean that only providers meeting the technical conditions would be eligible for any higher technical capital or grant funding for their HTE provision. For example, this could be to support providers to expand their provision, specialise or tailor their offer to meet local skills needs, or enhance teaching facilities and equipment. As stated above, we will be considering these funding proposals and wider reforms as part of the Spending Review.

International staff

This came up in Parliamentary questions this week.

Q – Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make it his Department’s policy to exclude scientific research occupations from proposals in the immigration White Paper for a minimum salary threshold.

A – Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North):

On 24 June 2019, the Government asked the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to consider the operation of salary thresholds in the future immigration system, including the impact of exemptions from minimum salary thresholds. The MAC is due to report by January 2020.

We recognise the vital contribution that scientists make to the UK. In his spring statement, my Rt Hon Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confirmed that PhD level occupations would be exempt from the Tier 2 cap. Additionally, researchers applying for settlement are exempt from the rule which states that, there should be no absence from the UK for 180 days if the absence from the UK is for the purpose carrying out research. A number of research roles also appear on the Shortage Occupation List which also exempts them from the settlement salary threshold

The Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) route is also available for internationally recognised leaders and promising future leaders, including in the science and research sector.

The Minister speaks (part 4) – on R&D investment

Universities Minister, Chris Skidmore, made his fourth (and final) speech in his series on R&D investment focusing on how to bring about major increases in private R&D investment.

The previous speeches covered:

Investing in people – ensuring that the best and brightest minds are working on the problems

Working collaboratives – across international borders to tackle the greatest challenges facing society

Enduring the funding and regulatory systems nurture new technologies and support risk taking

On private R&D investment he said:

If we are to deliver on our 2.4% commitment, we must be prepared to go much further and much faster. Overall investment in R&D will need to more than double in nominal terms, from current level of £35 billion per year to around £75 billion per year by 2027.

And at least two thirds of this investment will need to come from business. For many industries the need to invest in R&D is a pressing one – vital to competitive advantage. Businesses that thrive on the cutting edge are adept at making the most of basic research. They track down the brightest minds to seek answers to their most pressing problems. And they take the lead on experimental development and innovation, lifting new discoveries out of the lab and into people’s lives, driving economic and social prosperity.

That isn’t to say that the government won’t play its part. In fact, we are doing more than ever.

The Minister goes on to set out the additional funding, including a real terms QR funding uplift, and collaborative assistance that has led to successful business gains, such as Jaguar Land Rover committing to produce it’s electric cars in the UK (previously the company had been shedding staff and moving assets due to Brexit complexities).

Bold government policy has led to bold business decisions.

But to get to 2.4% we need to see significantly more than this. To ramp up from today’s levels to 2027, it is projected we’ll need to see an additional £12 billion each year from business.

To respond to this challenge the minister announced 7 focal areas:

Creating opportunity for the spark of creativity to arise through encouraging a vibrant and diverse research system with support for world-class, blue-skies research in universities and institutes… intellectual capital ultimately comes from people. So we need to invest confidently into postgraduate study, looking at all levels of our education system to getting more people into exciting R&D careers. This also means working tirelessly to put innovation and creativity at the centre of our education and training system.

Turning new ideas into new businesses, products and processes – developing a culture of startups.

Creating a scale-up culture with early-stage ventures able to access the funding needed to scale up

Driving up demand as well as supply – incentivising business investment into R&D for established businesses. The Minister states:

I see universities as ‘protagonists’, working with businesses to address problems where others cannot or dare not, and stimulating private investment.

Whether they are spinning out a company, licensing their IP, or undertaking contract or collaborative research with business, universities are remarkably skilled at identifying where they can have the greatest impact – locally, regionally, nationally and globally – and just getting on and doing it.

Supporting innovation across the whole UK – playing to local and regional strengths.

Focussing on the industrial strategies Grand Challenges

Ensuring research and innovation is right at the heart of Global Britain – the UK to be a magnet for foreign direct investment and as attractive a destination as possible for major businesses looking to relocate or scale up their R&D operations. Government policies and funding streams should ruthlessly drive up our global attractiveness.

But it is also incumbent on us to be better at marketing ourselves overseas. An important part of this is being open to talent. It is something businesses tell me constantly: the UK urgently needs an immigration system that encourages those with the best ideas and the most innovative minds to come and work here.

The evidence is unarguable: skilled immigration drives innovation. We mustn’t lose sight of this as we exit the EU. If we are to thrive, we need a genuinely international approach, a ‘freedom of talent’ approach that allows highly skilled people the flexibility to move and collaborate across borders.

That is the purpose of our international education strategy, providing focus and clarity to our ongoing educational exports

We cannot duck this challenge. Other nations are adopting aggressive approaches to R&D investment, driving significant increases in both public and private R&D performance. I’m not just talking about Israel and China – 2 obvious outliers. I’m also looking at Germany, who are ramping up public spending on R&D, committing to 3% annual increases every year for the next decade.

The technological revolution will stretch horizontally across our economy – every company will become a tech company of sorts.

So to conclude, delivering on 2.4% requires focusing on all parts of the innovation lifecycle, and looking at our policies and investments through multiple lenses. And we must keep a ruthless focus on evidence, to inform the choices we make as a nation.

This means we need to access the latest thinking on what works, and ensure we have the best and latest metrics so we know when we have succeeded. And it means listening to what businesses and academics are telling us, and acting accordingly.

Other points made:

The UK has the second highest number of doctoral graduate in the EU (Germany has the highest).

UK researchers are unusually collaborative in comparison with EU and G20 nations

The UK has above-average level of people working in the fastest-growing sectors

The UK’s field-weighted citations has beaten all other G7 countries since 2007 with 50% greater citation impact than the world average and 30% higher impact than the EU27. No other comparator nation has a larger proportion of its research among the most widely cited in the world.

Consultations

There are NINE new consultations and inquiries this week! Click here to view the updated tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.

Other news

Assistive Technology: The Student Loans Company plan to put out a tender for Assistive Technology Equipment and Training, results will be published during autumn 2019.

Industry partnership: Universities Minister, Chris Skidmore, announced UK pioneering technologies under development as part of 4 new partnerships between businesses and universities. The projects aim to help UK industry and academia lead the way in bringing new products to market that contribute to tackling the big generational challenges such as climate change and the needs of an ageing society. Skidmore stressed the importance of both government and industry contributing to the Industrial Strategy ambition of raising public and private investment in research and development to 2.4% of GDP by 2027. Projects include:

Developing new materials that do not make noise underwater, led by BAE Systems with the University of Southampton, the University of Nottingham and Lloyd’s Register.

Using AI and machine learning to speed up production of new medicines from vaccines to tablets in order to get them from the lab to the clinic faster, led by GlaxoSmithKline with the University of Strathclyde with University of Nottingham.

Developing a new range of fully recyclable ultra-high strength aluminium alloys for the automotive industry, led by Constellium and Brunel University.

Creating the next generation of household products using AI to pave the way for robots to complete advanced household tasks, led by Dyson and Imperial.

Student transitions: Education Secretary Damian Hinds announced ‘Leapskills Workshops’, developed by student accommodation provider Unite Students which offer schools and colleges resources to teach Year 12 and 13 pupils about independent living, managing money and dealing with conflict. The sessions aim to act as a digital interactive masterclass to enhance how schools and colleges teach young people about what to expect and how to prepare for the leap of living away from home for the first time.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds said: For young people leaving school, starting the next chapter of their life should be a positive life-changing experience – but we know that many people struggle with the pressures of moving away from home and living independently for the first time. A huge part of education is preparing young people for adult life and it is right that we teach them what to expect for life after school, whether that’s at university, work or an apprenticeship.

Unite Students CEO Richard Smith said: We believe that resilience is vital in young people and that given the right opportunities and experiences, young people can build resilience. The better prepared young people are for the transition to university, the easier they will find managing the highs and the lows often involved in this leap.

Apprenticeships: The DfE have published a summary document giving Apprenticeships and Traineeships figures. The data shows how higher level apprenticeships have boomed (68% growth since last year) with the main decline at the intermediate apprenticeship level. Apprenticeship starts from mature (19+) learners has increased by 13.8%.

September will see the completion of a 2 year HEIF project which has been investigating the potential of introducing additive manufacturing (3D Printing) into the RNLI to disrupt the supply chain and enhance engineering design.

The findings of the project will be disseminated at a Business Breakfast to be hosted by the RNLI on 5th September. The event will also be attended by local engineering businesses. If you are interested in the project and/or networking with engineering businesses, please sign up to attend the breakfast here.

The political news has been dominated by the Conservative leadership battle this week. Plus lots on research funding and tough conversations on social mobility.

Collaboration between universities and business

“State of the Relationship is the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) flagship annual report showcasing university-business collaboration across the UK and providing an authoritative source on emerging and critical trends in collaboration”. You can read the full report here.

BU features in a case study on page 28: ‘The Engagement Zone’ is the world’s largest study into audience’s mind-sets and responses to ‘Out-of-Home’ (OOH) advertising. In collaboration with COG Research and Exterion Media, Bournemouth University (BU) have designed and carried out this study using innovative technology to determine engagement statistics leading to increased advertising revenues on the Transport for London network (TfL).

Alice Frost of UKRI writes about the future of the relationship on page 38 with a rather complex visualisation.

Conservative Leadership Race

We’re down to the last two – Hunt and Boris – the battle of the Foreign Secretaries. Our vote tracking table follows below but first what are their positions on Education?

[Boris] has the most connections to higher education of the current candidates. Johnson served as Shadow Higher Education Minister between December 2005 and July 2007 and his brother, Jo, held the post of Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation between 2015 and 2018.

During his time as Shadow Higher Education Minister, Boris Johnson published a piece on University Policy for the 21stCentury for the right-wing think tank Politeia, which concluded with three recommendations: proper funding (including pay increases for academic staff); less state interference; and higher access standards. He has also spoken outabout [against] the categorisation of certain subjects as ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’.

Excerpt from Mickey Mouse (2007) degree article Boris wrote [still a very current debate today]:

..it is by now a settled conviction that the university system is riddled with a kind of intellectual dry rot, and it is called the Mickey Mouse degree. Up and down the country – so we are told – there are hundreds of thousands of dur-brained kids sitting for three years in an alcoholic or cannabis-fuelled stupor while theoretically attending a former technical college that is so pretentious as to call itself a university.

After three years of taxpayer-funded debauch, these young people will graduate, and then the poor saps will enter the workplace with an academic qualification that is about as valuable as membership of the Desperate Dan Pie Eaters’ Club, and about as intellectually distinguished as a third-place rosette in a terrier show. It is called a Degree, and in the view of saloon bar man, it is a con, a scam, and a disgrace

And yet I have to say that this view of higher education – pandemic in Middle Britain – is hypocritical, patronising and wrong. I say boo to the Taxpayers’ Alliance, and up with Mickey Mouse courses, and here’s why. (Read on for the rest here.)

HEPI continue: On the issue of tuition fees, Johnson spoke out against the Labour Party policy at the 2015 election, to lower tuition fees to £6,000.

And The Sun report Boris’ concerns over the level of student debt (2017).

Boris’ frequent references on the importance of female education as a ‘spanner’ while well intentioned could have been more eloquently expressed:

The emphasis that she places on women’s commercial potential and ability to drive the economy is absolutely right, and it is one of the reasons why all UK overseas effort is focused, above all, on the education of women and girls. I believe that that is the universal spanner that unlocks many of our problems.(2017 Income Tax session)

The universal spanner—a device that will solve almost any problem. I truly believe that female education is at the heart of solving so many other global problems, which is why we are putting it at the very centre of the Commonwealth summit in April and the upcoming G7 summit. Across our network, female education is at the heart of everything that we do. (Feb 2018 Topicals)

In addition, Boris’ leadership campaign headline education statement was on schools funding. He intends to increase secondary spending to at least £5k per pupil if he becomes PM due to “growing gulf” between students in London and the rest of the UK. This is £200 more per pupil than the Government’s current policy. Boris says:

“Of course there are special and extra costs of living in the capital, and London schools deserve that recognition. But I pledge to reverse the cuts in per pupil funding, so that thousands of schools get much more per pupil.” Guardian (3 June)

“This country is like a giant that is managing heroically to hop on one leg…If we fund our schools properly, if we pay sufficient attention both to vocational training as well as to mathematics and languages, then we will loosen the shackle that is holding us back.”

This argument has been refuted by Institute of Fiscal Studies. IFS says: any attempt to decrease funding differences between local authorities would be likely to reduce funds for the most disadvantaged pupils, as well as for London weighting. (source: TES) And Schools Week state Johnson’s intended school funding boost is only a 0.1% increase in overall schools spending.

His policy was criticised in the Commons. Mike Kane (Labour) said:

The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip [Boris Johnson] said that all schools should “level up”, that there should be no differentiation in funding formulas, and that school funding should be protected “in real terms”. There are no facts or figures behind that statement, but he obviously does not want the truth to get in the way of a good story on education (Education Funding debate, June 2019)

And his intention to cut tax attacked because it reduces the funds available to support education and health care. Lyn Brown MP (Labour):

…the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), who has promised £10 billion of tax cuts. That money would pay for more than 400,000 new teachers, but of course it is not teachers or nurses who would benefit from those tax cuts. More than 80% of the financial gains would go to the highest earning 10% of families. It is clear where his priorities lie, and it ain’t in investing in our children. (June 2019, Social Mobility Treasure Reform debate)

Finally, speaking to The Sun (3 June) Boris pledged his attention for the environment. The Sun writes:

As well as promising to take Britain out of the EU at last, he made an appeal to centrist MPs by promising to protect the environment and spend more on public services. Speaking to camera, BoJo [Boris] concluded: “If there is one lesson from that referendum in 2016, it is that too many people feel left behind – that they’re not able to take part fully in the opportunities and success of our country…That’s why now is the time to unite our society and unite our country. To build the infrastructure, to invest in education, to improve the environment and support our NHS.

Jeremy Hunt – The HEPI blogs paint a different picture of Hunt’s approach to education – despite his self-confessed interest in it as a key policy area. HEPI write:

While Hunt’s comments on higher education have been few, the issues he has chosen to speak out on are likely to be well received by the sector. In 2017, Hunt wrote for the Times Higher Education supporting the focus by universities on student mental health to tackle increased levels of student suicide.

Hunt, as a soft Brexiteer, has stated that Brexit must be implemented, but needs to be handled in a way which ‘strengthens our higher education institutions and strengthens our economy’. At the beginning of this year he focused on the soft power brought about by the UK having three of the world’s top ten universities and 450,000 international students.

However, Hunt was described by the head of the Royal College of Nursing as ‘hell-bent’ on reducing the numbers of nurses when he abolished nursing bursaries during his time as Secretary of State for Health, which led to a 23 per cent reduction in the number of applications to Nursing courses. This removal of nursing bursaries may suggest a commitment to the current funding model, as this change lead to spreading the regular funding model to cover nursing. His long experience as Health Secretary will likely have also given him some understanding of the importance of research.

Jeremy Hunt also has business links to higher education, having co-founded ‘Hotcourses’ which runs websites listing courses for students around the world. He received £14.5 million from the sale of Hotcourses in 2017, making him the richest member of the Cabinet.

Who might Boris appoint to the Cabinet?

It’s a long wait until the party leader is announced on 22 July but speculation on who Boris may appoint to his cabinet has started already.

There are three groups orbiting around Boris Johnson at the moment: his old London gang, his parliamentary long marchers, and his new recruits, who have helped to deliver his victories in the parliamentary rounds. Johnson doesn’t like being beholden to any one tribe, or faction, so expect his administration to be made up of a mix of these three groups. (Spectator.)

Boris’s choice of Chancellor will be crucial because, no matter who is in No. 10, the rest of the government can often be run by the Treasury. Gordon Brown used that position to wage daily warfare on Tony Blair. Johnson saw for himself how Philip Hammond was able to undermine the no-deal preparations — so he’ll be determined to have someone in the job who is in agreement with him on Brexit and the importance of leaving on 31 October. Currently the media are favouring Sajid Javid as Chancellor.

It is interesting who the key Education and Universities Ministers backed as party leader at ballot 3 – it wasn’t Boris!

SoS Damien Hinds for Gove

Ex- Universities Minister Jo Johnson for big brother Boris

Current Universities Minister Chris Skidmore for Javid

SoS BEIS Greg Clark for Hunt

Anne Milton (Minister Apprenticeships & Skills) for Gove

Education Select Committee Chair Robert Halfon backed Javid

And Sam Gyimah was undeclared.

When a new leader comes in we can expect to see changes at the top. Damien Hinds and Greg Clark were both appointed by Theresa May and have both proved rather resilient and hung on through the turbulent times and Brexit arguments. When the party leader is appointed Hinds will have been in post 17 months and Clark for 2 years. Ministerial changes will bring small changes for Dorset’s local MPs, some of whom hold junior Government positions. However, when the Minister they serve is moved on they (usually) resign too.

Conor Burns (BU is in Conor’s Bournemouth West constituency) served as PPS to Greg Clark (BEIS) and then Boris Johnson, during his stint as Foreign Secretary, and is an outspoken supporter of Boris. While Conor doesn’t currently hold parliamentary office might his service and loyalty to Boris be rewarded and allow him to gain status rising above the PPS ranks and/or holding party position?

Tobias Ellwood is currently parliamentary under-secretary of state for Defence (since 2017)

Simon Hoare (North Dorset) has served both Damian Hinds (Education) and Sajid Javid (Home Secretary) in the last two years but has just moved on to Chair the Northern Ireland Affairs select committee.

Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset & North Poole) isn’t currently in post but was PPS to Raab and has previously worked for Penny Mordaunt.

Recess?

Let’s hope the MPs have insurance clauses covering their booked summer holidays. Parliament usually enters recess at the end of July. However, the party leader won’t be confirmed until 22 July. The Queen should then confirm the leader as PM. Although potentially, should Tory rebels create enough trouble, there could be two weeks in which the Opposition have the opportunity to demonstrate they can round up enough support to form an alternative Government. And if they can’t a general election would be called.

It is looking likely that Recess could be shortened and delayed (or cancelled altogether). Once confirmed we can expect the new PM to announce the key appointments within their cabinet quickly. Yet with the EU leaders absent on their long summer hols during this period how will the PM take forward the EU re-negotiations for Brexit?

Parliamentarians usually return from summer recess during the first full week of September, spend three weeks on parliamentary business, then disappear off for Party Conference season (roughly 3 weeks) taking us very close to the Halloween Brexit exit deadline.

Education Spending in England

The IfS have some new analysis on education spending in England – timely as Conservative candidates for PM rush to promise more cash in a bid to win votes. It’s a bit of a fact checking article.

“Leadership hopeful Boris Johnson has made a commitment to ensure fair funding across schools in England. He has highlighted that some areas of London receive per pupil funding of about £6,800 whilst other parts of England receive funding of around £4,200 per pupil and referred to this as a ‘postcode lottery.’ The Department for Education has recently created a new national funding formula for schools in England, which took effect from April 2018. This ensures that school funding allocations to all local authorities in England are now based on measures of need and costs, the first time this has been the case in England for nearly 15 years. With the introduction of this formula, the government – which Mr Johnson was part of – effectively ended a long-standing postcode lottery in school funding in England.

There are still differences in per pupil across local authorities in England. Local authorities receive higher levels of per pupil funding if they have higher levels of deprivation and/or because they have to pay London weighting. Policymakers who want to reduce differences in funding between areas should be clear that doing so would almost certainly reduce the extent of extra funding for deprivation and/or London weighting.

Boris Johnson has also committed to a minimum level of funding for individual secondary schools in England of £5,000 per pupil. The new national funding formula already has a minimum funding level of £4,800 per pupil, but this is largely advisory and local authorities can effectively ignore it. The cost of Boris Johnson’s proposal will depend on whether his proposed £5,000 floor is also advisory or represents a new legal minimum. In both cases, however, the likely cost is likely to be relatively small in total.

Many of the leadership hopefuls have also talked about providing a spending boost to 16-19 education, covering school sixth forms, sixth form colleges and further education colleges. Given this sector has received the largest cuts to spending per pupil over the last few years, such increased policy attention is welcome. Between 2010-11 and 2017-18, college spending per student fell by over 8% in real terms and funding per student in school sixth forms fell by 25%.

IFS researchers are currently part way through producing new figures on 16-19 education spending per pupil for our annual report on education spending, produced with funding from the Nuffield Foundation and due out in the Autumn 2019. These new figures will address some recent complexities resulting from changes to high needs funding and the conversion of many sixth form colleges to academy status.

In the meantime, we set out the cost of providing the same boosts to 16-19 education as we do for schools. Given an expected total spend of £5.6bn on further education colleges, school sixth forms and sixth form colleges in 2019-20, we calculate that reversing 4% of total cuts would cost about £230m in 2019-20, whilst reversing cuts of 8% increase would cost about £480m.”

TEF

There are other things happening in the UK but TEF rolls on. This year had a low participation rate and there are a lot of alternative providers and FE colleges in the list. All year two TEF awards (like BU’s) have been extended for another year to allow for changes after the independent review. We anticipate all institutions will submit in 2020 for results in 2021 under whatever new regime is designed. Wonkhe have some analysis here. Amongst this year’s results

Bournemouth and Poole College have a bronze

UCLAN have a silver (same as 2018)

University for the Creative Arts have a gold (up from silver in 2018)

University of East London have a bronze (same as 2018)

Roehampton have a silver (up from Bronze in 2018)

Sheffield have a silver (also silver in 2018)

Salford have a bronze (same as 2018)

Teesside have a silver (they also got silver in 2018)

Sussex have a silver (they also got silver in 2018)

Staffordshire have a gold (up from silver on 2018)

Yeovil College has a provisional award

University of Wales Trinity St David has a silver (up from bronze in 2018)

Research Funding

It’s been a busy week for the Lords Science and Technology Committee.

Firstly they held two sessions discussing University research funding in the light of Augar. You can read a fuller summary by Dods here. The session questioned the impact of the Augar Review upon research. The key points made were:

UKRI said that any reduction in fees should be compensated for elsewhere with additional funding found.

Research England said if the compensation was not forthcoming they would consider alternative resource allocation, but that the reduction would undermine the Government’s 2.4% R&D target and impact university research capabilities.

Baroness Morgan expressed concern that substitute funding could be aimed at certain courses giving some subjects precedence over others.

Research England repeatedly said that reducing the research funding to universities would likely limit and restrict private and business funding, and reduce universities’ capability to engage with business to make best use of this funding. Baroness Young echoed this sating to meet the 2.4% Government target an increase in public funding was critical to incentivise private funding. UKRI said the R&D funding needed to be doubled with a ‘substantial and sustained’ increase in public funding.

Research England argued for QR funding to be sustained at current levels which he felt were an adequate level of funding.

UKRI said that workplace culture and immigration matters were integral to attract and retain the best talent.

Much discussion focussed on how research funding was increasingly be awarded in line with applied research that will contribute to the industrial strategy away from discovery research.

Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court said the Treasury was in favour of a more skilled workforce as that led to greater prosperity and increased revenue, and that the Treasury would be nervous regarding the reduction of student fees. Lord Macpherson noted that the Government might make up for the reduction in the short term but that might not be sustainable.

Lord Macpherson went on to state research was a priority for the Government, however, there were difficult trade-offs to be made within the current context of Brexit, the housing crisis and the crisis of social care and local authority services.

Next was a session with similar themes this time answered by the Ministers and Directors. Lord Patel chaired the meeting questioning:

Chris Skidmore, Universities Minister;

Harriet Wallace, Director – International Science and Innovation (Dept for BEIS); and

Skidmore was asked how much of the Augar review would be implemented. He responded that key decisions about Augar would be taken under the next prime minister and the 2019 Spending Review. That if he was still universities minister in two months, he would take forward the consultation period. Skidmore said he was under no illusions about the impact of Augar’s recommendation on fee level reductions, which would take £1.8 billion out of Higher Education (HE) and had been honest about the need for a top up to offset this, in order to keep up the ability of UK universities to finance their research.

QR research was broached next, and in contrast to the above reported session, it was recognised that QR funding had reduced. Skidmore took the side of the HE sector stating he was aware QR funding had reduced in real terms, and whilst the government had invested in the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, there was still a challenge in maintaining base-level, flexible research. He supported increasing QR funding (as part of the 2.4% GDP target) and hoped there would be an uplift announced ‘shortly’ on QR funding for 2019-20.

On cross-subsidisation Skidmore was questioned whether BEIS had done anything to address the potential collapse of cross-subsidy with regard to the research base in UK universities. He replied that longer term there was a wider issue about whether the cross-subsidy should be kept in place. That the premise that most courses cost less than tuition fees was an illusion and that there were a wide range of funding sources universities needed to look to, such as levering business investment and funding from charities, as well as providing doctoral training.

Paul Drabwell, BEIS, said UKRI should be looking at how research is commercialised and that UK universities needed to market themselves to investors better, particularly with regards to licencing and spin out.

The Minister agreed with the earlier sessions stating public subsidy was needed to leverage private investment in research. Lord Vallance suggested using tax credits could be a solution, however, Skidmore said that BEIS already had several ideas in play to discuss with the Treasury. He praised the grand challenges (industrial strategy) as successful in incentivising private and university collaborative efforts. Infrastructures surrounding research institutions also played an important role, he added, mentioning various initiatives such as healthy aging in Newcastle and graphene in Manchester. Furthermore, Innovate UK was currently looking at how loans could be used to incentivise SME investment into research, such as through hiring researchers.

On the research funding balance Skidmore did not think there was any trend away from funding experimental reach because of too much of a focus on applied research.

On PhD researchers needed to meet the 2.4% target Skidmore noted overall an additional 260,000 researchers were needed, PhDs contributing as part of this. However, in line with current Government thinking, he was opposed to the idea of ‘academia or bust’ for researchers, and that people should be able to work in private industry and come back to universities in the future.

Brexit – Skidmore said the UK should be making a bold offer to pay whatever was possible to retain membership of EU programmes such as Horizon and the ERC (European Research Council). Skidmore is also opposed to the £30,000 salary cap and minimum entry requirements and felt the post-study work visa was essential for the UK to be competitive with other countries.

International Students: Skidmore spoke about meeting the target for having 600,000 international (EU and non-EU) students (implying an additional 260,000) studying in the UK highlighting his recent 2020-21 home fee status for EU students announcement. He also said he was hopeful that issues around postgraduate student funding would be announced ‘shortly’. However, he noted there was an issue with regard to broadening the portfolio of countries from which students could come to the UK. Meaning the new PM would need to deal with the issue of visa fees and post-study work visas to encourage a broad range of nationalities to study in the UK. Skidmore is in favour of a milder approach to immigration in an HE context.

Two bosses

Lord Griffiths noted a recent comment from Lord Willetts (ex-Universities Minister) stating there was a mismatch with regard to departmental attitudes to university funding between the DfE and BEIS and that universities could be the sole responsibility of the DfE.

Skidmore disagreed, saying he enjoyed working across two departments and that the two departments broadly agreed on: international research and innovation, international education strategy, and the importance of the challenge-based approach. He was also concerned that being under the sole responsibility of the DfE might mean that universities lost out to funding due to campaigns to increase funding to schools. In addition, he said there was latitude for a post-18 minister on Further Education. An interesting comment, unless Skidmore is looking to expand his remit, as two post-18 ministers could compete and create friction – slowing down the progress of the sector.

There is another research funding oral evidence session next week – with Phillip Augar scheduled to be questioned on Tuesday.

Immigration Update

Following Sajid Javid’s plans for a new single, skills-based immigration system when free movement the Government is consulting with stakeholders and employers on where to set the bar within the new immigration system. A series of engagements are planned to look at the technical detail of the proposals. Several advisory groups have also been set up to discuss policy, system design and implementation. There is a specific group for education. Organisations that will be members of the Education Sector Advisory Group are listed on this link (second set down). The new immigration system will be implemented in a phased approach from January 2021.

Social Mobility

The Social Mobility Commission came under fire during this week’s Education select committee session. You’ll recall the last Social Mobility Commission resigned en masse in protest at the Government’s failure to take note and act on the Commission’s recommendations and the stalling or regression of social mobility within the UK. Six months in and Dame Martina Milburn’s new Commission was questioned on their lack of progress. Dame Marina said that the commission has not made a large impact since the most recent commissioners were appointed six months ago, but she said that this is because they have been busy commissioning new research, publishing research already in the pipeline, and figuring out the commission’s new strategy. She said the commission felt they “haven’t quite come up for air” since starting work and that, when she took over, permanent staff had been “demoralised”.

In further questioning Dame Martina had to admit that she had very little contact with Ministers and the Government had not responded to the Commission’s report on skills. She said she had not witnessed the increased engagement from ministers that was promised by the Government when the new Commission was set up.

Dame Martina was also criticised for failing to make use of the work/research already done by the previous Commission and for earmarking a £2 million budget for research. Lucy Powell MP suggested that there are plenty more “nimble” charities and research organisations delivering similar research for much less money.

The Commission said their focus moving forward is to press the Government to do more to support FE. They emphasised the need for a 16-19 pupil premium and for education to form the ‘cornerstone’ of the Commission’s strategy. Again the minister has not engaged with the Commission on FE. In response to a question from Ben Bradley MP, Dame Martina said that if a future prime minister decided to scrap the Social Mobility Commission, along with other Government commissions, and plough the money into FE, her response would be “thank God – go ahead and do it”.

The Commission was asked why it didn’t do more, e.g. set up pilot projects in FE colleges, rather than simply commissioning research. Panellists said they would welcome their remit being expanded in this way, but it is currently not possible given the constraints attached to the funding they are allocated.

Dame Martina also said that the 2020 change to T levels should be paused, but that the Secretary of State has refused to do so.

HE: In regard to HE Dame Martina insisted that the commission has “started conversations” with universities about how to ensure that fewer students from disadvantaged background drop out of their courses. She said there is a great deal higher education institutions can do to improve retention rates, including making it clearer what bursaries are available. However, it is important not to portray university as the only way of getting on in life, citing, again, the importance of FE and also of increasing the take-up of apprenticeships. Dame Martina said a majority of apprenticeships are going to people over 25, something she described as “quite urgent to address”.

Social mobility versus social justice: The Commission were questioned on whether they should be focused on the issue of social justice rather than social mobility, as few people understand what the term “social mobility” really means. Dame Martina said a social justice focus would be broader, and this would require more resources. She told the committee that social mobility is defined as a person’s ability to do significantly better than their parents, while social justice takes into account all aspects of poverty and disadvantage. She said a Social Justice Commission would still have to concern itself with social mobility.

Other Social Mobility News

Les Ebdon (ex-Head of the Office for Far Access) has been appointed as the non-executive Chair of NEON (the National Education Opportunities Network). He said: “while we have made advances in widening participation in recent years much more remains to be done to promote and safeguard fair access so that higher education can be for millions more students the life transforming experience that it was for me.” Joining him on the committee are several university officers from various WP related roles.

Nicola Dandridge, OfS, expressed her dissatisfaction at HE providers who have poor outcomes for disadvantaged students. You can read it in full here. Excerpts:

…we [OfS] are requiring universities and other higher education providers to recruit more disadvantaged students, support them so they do not drop out and get better jobs. Some believe that achieving these outcomes simultaneously is too challenging. One argument we hear regularly is that if providers recruit students from disadvantaged backgrounds then it is inevitable that higher numbers will drop out. We do not accept that argument.

…we see examples of students from disadvantaged backgrounds being inappropriately recruited onto poor quality courses, and not being given the support that they need. At some higher education providers, particularly those offering mainly courses below full degree level, one in five students drop out…The argument that these levels should be tolerated because the students come from poor backgrounds is not acceptable. For these students to drop out having taken on tuition fee loans of up to £9,250 a year (plus loans for living costs), is a terrible waste for student and taxpayer alike. When the latest figures show that only 41 per cent of students in England feel their course offers good value for money, parts of the higher education sector can and must do better…we need to face the facts that some students are being inappropriately recruited to courses and left to flounder.

Other news

PG Outcomes: The DfE has published statistics on employment and earnings outcomes of HE postgraduates.

On average, earnings for Level 8 graduates did not increase over time. There was a gender gap, with females earning £100 less five years after graduation in 2016/17 than they did in 2014/15, whilst males earned £700 more.

Overall earnings for Level 7 (taught) graduates went up over time (by £800 from £30,900 to £31,700), whilst for Level 8 graduates, average earnings five years after graduation stayed the same (£36,400) between 2014/15 and 2016/17.

For the small number of Level 7 (research) graduates who are not included in the above chart, average earnings five years after graduation went down over time but interestingly the gender gap was reversed, with male graduates earning £2,100 less and female graduates £900 less in 2014/15 than they had done in 2016/17.

Widening access: NEON report that Russel Group universities have pledge to scrap their ‘facilitating subjects’ list (preferred academic A level subjects – which ignore the arts) following criticism from ‘sector figures’ and schools stating that it limits students’ choices and narrows the school curriculum. Access HE explore how targeting could be improved to benefit widening access aims in Polar Opposite.

Another busy week in national politics and also in HE policy. The government may be having a slightly quieter time while they elect a new leader but that gives us time for plenty of speculation….

Research Communications

BU is running a Research Communication Day on Thursday 20 June. The morning (from 10:30) will share tips and hints on successful communication through talks from the Editor of The Conversation and a BU academic colleague experienced in research communication. The afternoon provides choice in a series of 50 minute sessions covering everything from broadcast training, developing the impact of your research, sharing research through social media and – saving the best for last – the BU policy team will be there to talk colleagues through how to engage with policy makers from 14:30. See this intranet page to book. Please share with colleagues!

The Radio 4 Today programme (Thursday) covered this story. Nick Hillman (HEPI) gave his personal view that the decision to share mental health status should be opt out rather than opt in to consent –– because it is more efficient to run a system on opt out where the majority (over 50%) of the student body consents.

Chris Skidmore answered a Parliamentary question: Q – Dr Matthew Offord: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance his Department has published on suicide prevention strategies for universities.

A – Chris Skidmore:

Mental health is a priority for the government, which is why we have worked with Universities UK, the Office for Students, and other stakeholders in the higher education sector to develop guidance on measures to help prevent suicide. This guidance was published in September 2018, ahead of the 2018/19 academic year.

In addition, the government has published the first cross-government suicide prevention plan for wider society. The plan, led by my hon. Friend, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, sets out actions for local government, the NHS, the criminal justice system and the Department for Education in relation to universities. The plan focuses on how social media and the latest technology, such as predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, can identify those at risk of suicide.

41% of students perceive ‘good’ or ‘very good’ value from their course – this is the second consecutive year with a three percentage point improvement; 29% of students perceive ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ value, which is a drop of three percentage points since last year and five percentage points since 2017.

Value-for-money perceptions differ according to the characteristics of students. Those from Scotland have relatively high positive perceptions (63%) while non-EU international students have relatively low positive perceptions (37%). Recent funding changes for students from Wales have not yet had any material impact on perceptions of value for money.

Teaching quality is the main factor for students who perceive positive value (64%) and tuition fees are the main factor for students who perceive poorer value (62%).

Among students who say their experience surpasses their prior expectations, 59% cite the ‘right level of challenge’ as the key factor. Where students report a worse experience than expected, around one-third (35%) blame themselves for not putting in enough effort. This rises to 42% among BME students.

A new question shows most students feel they were ‘very prepared’ (16%) or ‘slightly prepared’ (44%) for university, compared to under one-quarter who were ‘slightly prepared’ (14%) or ‘very unprepared’ (9%).

Two-thirds of students (64%) would choose the same course and same university if they were applying again. Only 4% would opt to ‘do an apprenticeship’ and even fewer would not enter higher education to ‘get a job’ (3%) or not enter higher education to ‘do something else’ (2%).

There have been small changes to average contact hours and workload in recent years. Since 2015, there has been a decline in independent study (15.2 hours a week to 13.8) and an increase in timetabled contact hours (13.4 hours to 13.9 hours).

Given relatively low scores for student satisfaction with feedback in this and other surveys, a new question for 2019 asked how this might be improved. The most popular option, supported by 63% of students, was ‘more detail on why the mark was awarded’.

Students are significantly more anxious than other young people: just 16% of students surveyed report feeling ‘low anxiety’, against 37% for all those aged 20 to 24.

A new question on disclosing mental health issues to students’ parents or guardians finds high levels of support. Two-thirds (66%) of students support disclosure ‘under extreme circumstances’ and a further 15% support it ‘under any circumstances’.

The results confirm students want more support from taxpayers for the costs of teaching undergraduates: 22% say Government should pay all the costs and 43% say Government should pay more than half the costs. This is out of line with the recent Review of Post-18 Education and Funding (the Augar report) on England, which says taxpayers should continue to pay half.

For the first time, students were asked about their views on two-year degrees. While over four-in-ten students were ‘very positive’ (19%) or ‘positive’ (24%), three-in-ten were ‘negative’ (19%) or ‘very negative’ (10%) and the rest were either neutral (24%) or did not know (4%).

Policy recommendations

A notable increase in value-for-money perceptions shows last year’s comparable increase was not just a quirk or a blip. …The most effective ways for higher education institutions to continue improving value-for-money perceptions may be to make faster progress in telling students where their fees go and further improving the quality of teaching and learning….Given the big drop in value-for money perceptions after fees increased in England from 2012, any significant reduction in fees could improve value-for-money perceptions further.

…our results suggest schools, colleges and universities could all do more to help prepare potential students, especially in the context of a growing number of students from non-traditional backgrounds (such as first-in-family students). …The notable contrast between the idea of higher education as a time when you can be true to yourself and the specific groups that feel least well prepared, such as LGB+ students, suggest targeted interventions could also help raise preparedness.

….The big expansion in apprenticeships that many want to see could depend more on finding new learners rather than persuading people who are already on course for a more traditional university experience to change direction – or else, we need to convey the perceived benefits of apprenticeships more persuasively

…the results pose a challenge to the overall idea that levels of preparedness for higher education should always be high in all respects – at least, to the extent that learning gain seems to correlate inversely with preparedness. [this is interesting – it might suggest instead that these courses need to be more stretching?]

The Survey suggests the optimal total student workload – for example, in relation to overall student satisfaction and satisfaction with course and institution – is in the 30–39 hours category. This chimes with the evidence on the best work–life balance for people in the labour market. This level of commitment leaves more time for student activities – such as involvement in clubs and societies, part-time employment and socialising – than is available to those students with the longest working hours (such as those preparing to work in the health sector). Students with the lowest workloads of all, of under 10 hours a week, in contrast face a range of challenges that affect their quality of life and their quality of learning. Regulators may well wish to ask whether any student can secure the full benefits of higher education at such a minimal level.

The Survey provides evidence to help explain the already well-documented BME attainment gap – for instance, there are notable differences by ethnicity in perceptions of teaching quality. It remains controversial in some quarters to suggest curricula, the make-up of academic staff and the provision of support services should reflect the changing demographics of students, but the evidence base for doing this is strong.

The Survey adds to the growing evidence on the relationship between students’ living arrangements and their quality of life. While some students will always choose to live at home for a variety of reasons, any attempt by policymakers to reduce students’ costs by encouraging more students to live at home risks encouraging less good outcomes – unless accompanied by specific, and potentially quite costly, actions to address the challenge.

The Student Academic Experience Survey began in early 2006 as a way of measuring how the academic experience of students changes in response to funding reforms. However, despite the big shifts in funding, most obviously for students from England and Wales, the workload of students has only changed marginally – the most notable shift being the number of timetabled hours moving from being slightly behind the number of independent learning hours to slightly ahead. Advocates and opponents of so-called ‘neo-liberal’ student funding systems may well have over-exaggerated the effect that changes to student funding have on the way students and institutions approach teaching and learning.

For many years, one of the lowest-scoring areas in a number of student surveys, including the official National Student Survey, has been assessment and feedback on academic work. While our Survey shows modest improvements on this issue, the responses to one of the new questions could help drive greater improvements. …

A new question on disclosure of mental health issues to a student’s parents or guardian finds high levels of support, with two-thirds of students supporting disclosure ‘in extreme circumstances’ and a further 15% supporting it ‘in any circumstances’. These results are similar to those provided by university applicants in another survey back in 2017, suggesting that views have not changed much since enrolment. Some higher education staff have, rightly, pointed out the legal and practical difficulties in disclosing mental health issues experienced by their (adult) students to others, although some have recently changed practice in this area. Our results provide support to politicians, the families of students who have taken their own lives and others, such as some university staff, who have sought to encourage debate on current disclosure practices.

A majority of students across all four parts of the UK continue to believe the costs of higher education tuition should be covered entirely or mainly by taxpayers via the government. …

…Nearly twice as many full-time undergraduates say they would feel ‘very positive’ about such accelerated learning if they were applying to university now as say they would be ‘very negative’ about it (19% versus 10%). There are somewhat higher levels of support among students aged over 25, who might particularly appreciate the option of taking less time out of the labour market in order to secure a degree. …

The Minister speaks

Chris Skidmore was at the launch of the HEPI survey and took a very different approach from his predecessors. Unlike Sam Gyimah and Jo Johnson, who arrived with a flock of minders and gave big speeches from the podium, notably in Sam Gyimah’s case attacking the sector for focussing on putting “bums on seats” at the expense of student outcomes, the Minister took part in a fireside chat with Nick Hillman in which he came across pretty well. He was necessarily a bit vague on policy – Augar being a question for the new PM and the spending review – but repeated his message on a 3D threshold (something he was prepared to “die on a hill” over. And he said that the “bums on seats” line should be banned, because no institution was doing that. He also failed to attack the sector on unconditional offers and grade inflation – unlike Nicola Dandridge, who spoke later and claimed credit for the OfS on progress made in the sector on both issues.

He talked about investment in research [we’ve included the RP commentary]:

Investing in new technologies is inherently risky. If it weren’t, we could comfortably leave it to the market. But so long as the UK has R&D excellence on which we can build and so long as there is an international business case and we base our decisions firmly in expert advice, we should seek to continue to invest in emerging technologies. This is a fair risk to ask the taxpayer to bear given the enormous economic opportunities on offer.

[This is a bold move, politically. Has anyone asked the mythical taxpayer if they are happy to pile in on this investment? If the Augar review tells us anything, it is that there is not enough public support to justify the expenditure on undergraduate teaching in England. An expensive industrial strategy requires similar levels of public sign-off. That’s why Corbyn’s question about Scunthorpe is important—that’s what most people hear when you use the phrase “industrial strategy”. Just as government and universities did not explain the student finance system enough to the public, there is a big communication job to do over the investment in the industrial strategy.]

…we need to spell out a clear strategy for our future investment. This is crucial for the government’s commitment to spending 2.4 per cent of GDP, both public and private, on R&D by 2027—the OECD average. For we need to not only raise our investment but decide the direction of this investment and what we are aiming for.

The Minister also spoke about the Government’s recently published white paper on Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which sets out plans to transform the UK’s regulatory system, to support innovation while protecting citizens and the environment. This followed concerns raised by industry that overzealous regulation would stifle innovation.

In related news, University Alliance members have been awarded £76m to fund the establishment of 13, new innovative research institutes and centres. Their research will be funded by a grant from the Expanding Excellence in England Fund. This is part of the government’s modern Industrial Strategy aimed at maintaining the UK’s position at the forefront of innovative scientific research.

Student Mobility

UUK published their annual student mobility report – Gone International: rising aspirations. It finds 18,510 respondents to the DLHE survey have undertaken a period abroad during their undergraduate study. This equates to 7.8% of all undergraduates with almost half of all mobility funded through Erasmus+ (49.2%).

Language graduates had the highest mobility rate of 34%, rising to 87% if linguistics students were excluded. The next highest mobility rates were for combined subjects (33%), medicine and dentistry (31%) and veterinary science (17%). Social work, computer science, sport science and nursing students are still least likely to undertake time overseas. English students were less mobile (7.2%) than the other nations.

UUK note an increase in more students from ‘underrepresented demographics’ studying abroad (including students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, black and minority ethnic (BME) students and disabled students). 5.6% of mobile students were from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds (9.6% of advantaged students were mobile). White students (8.3%) were more mobile than Asian (5.5%) or black (5.1%) students. Care leavers participation was 4.5%. Page 4/5 has more statistics on the other disadvantaged categories.

Most mobility was for study (75%), followed by work (22%) and volunteering (4%).

Duration:

64% long-term mobilities of 14 weeks or more

15% of instances were medium term mobilities (5−13 weeks)

21% were short-term mobilities of less than four weeks

50.8% of mobility activities were in Europe, with 18.5% in North America and 12.3% in Asia.

Consistent with findings from previous years the report confirms that graduates who had undertaken time abroad were more likely to be in graduate employment or further study, have a higher average starting salary and less likely to be unemployed than their non-mobile peers. Here are the stats:

Mobile graduates were more likely to obtain first-class honours or an upper second-class degree (91.6%) than non-mobile graduates (80%).

Six months after graduating only 3.1% of mobile graduates were unemployed, compared to 4.2% of non-mobile graduates.

Mobile graduates who were working in full-time, paid employment had an average salary of £23,482, compared to an average salary of £22,256 for non-graduates (a difference of 5.5%) six months after graduating.

Of all working, mobile graduates in the 2016−17 cohort, 78.3% secured a ‘graduate-level’ job within six months of graduating, compared to 73.2% of non-mobile graduates

Research

Research England has published a delivery plan outlining how it will fund and support universities to deliver world-leading research and knowledge exchange. It sets out the research and knowledge exchange priorities and describes how Research England will work in partnership with other organisations such as the Office for Students. It’s one of 10 delivery plans published this week by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), outlining how UKRI will work with its partners to ensure that world-leading research and innovation continues to flourish in the UK. The 2019-20 plans highlight the areas of focus and key activities of UKRI’s nine constituent councils and its cross-cutting themes. The plans also detail UKRI’s approach to delivering the government’s target of 2.4% GDP spend on research and innovation by 2027.

Research England Executive Chair, David Sweeney, said: I’m delighted to set out in full, for the first time, the wide range of activity that Research England delivers as part of UK Research & Innovation, and our plans for the near future. The partnership between universities and UKRI is at the heart of the UK’s research and innovation success. Our Delivery Plan describes how Research England will have a key role, along with the other three devolved administration funding bodies, in supporting and building that partnership.

UK Research and Innovation Chief Executive, Professor Sir Mark Walport, said: The delivery plans announced today are the blueprints for UKRI’s ambition to deliver the future of research and innovation. They outline how we will address the major global and societal challenges of our time, catalyse collaboration and contribute to meeting the government’s ambitious 2.4% target. UKRI has had a strong first year – the Future Leaders Fellowships programme, the Strength in Places Fund and the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund are all examples of the difference we can make working together as one organisation.

Student Loans

The Student Loans Company have published stats on student loans in England. Key Findings:

The amount lent to HE borrowers increased by 8.4% to reach £16.2 billion in financial year 2018-19. The amount lent to FE borrowers decreased by 5.7% to reach £209.5m in financial year 2018-19.

Net repayments posted to customer accounts within HE increased by 8.0% to reach £2.5 billion in the financial year 2018-19.

The balance outstanding for HE loans increased by 16.6% to reach £121.8 billion at the end of the financial year 2018-19.

The average loan balance for HE borrowers in the 2019 repayment cohort on entry to repayment was £35,950.

The total number of borrowers still owing Higher Education loans increased by 6.0% reaching 5.3 million at the end of April 2019 compared to 5.0 million at the end of April 2018.

There was a parliamentary question on tuition fees (in light of Augar report) this week – the expected answer was given.

Q – Faisal Rashid: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if the Government will bring forward plans to reduce university tuition fees to £7,500.

A – Chris Skidmore: The independent panel’s report to government forms an important step in the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding. The government will consider the panel’s recommendations carefully and will conclude the review at the Spending Review. The government has not yet taken decisions with regards to the recommendations put forward.

Hate Crime and Sexual Harassment

Advance HE have evaluated the £4.7 million Catalyst funding which supported 119 projects (71 HEIs including BU) to tackle hate crime and sexual violence on campus. The OfS also published a news story publicising the evaluation and highlighted the following positive outcomes:

an increase in the reporting of incidents and evidence of a reduction in tolerance of hate crime

the positive impact of hiring specialist staff to support students facing harassment or violence

greater evidence of partnership working – with both students and external organisations – to tackle these issues.

Jim Dickinson blogged for Wonkhe to explore how concern for an institution’s reputation and other hindrances can stall initiatives to tackle hate crime, sexual misconduct and harassment.

Equality and Diversity student data

The proportion of full-time students aged 21 to 25 entering postgraduate study has been increasing (63.2 per cent in 2010-11 to 68.8 per cent in 2017-18), while those aged 26 to 40 have been decreasing.

Reporting of mental health conditions has seen a bigger increase than reporting of any other type of disability. The proportion of undergraduate entrants reporting a mental health condition has increased from 0.6 per cent in 2010-11 to 3.1 per cent in 2017-18.

During the last seven years, black students had the biggest increase in postgraduate entrance, rising from 5.7 per cent of postgraduate entrants in 2010-11 to 8.3 per cent in 2017-18.

Undergraduate entrants to STEM subjects (biological and sport sciences, physical sciences, mathematical sciences, engineering and technology, and computing) continue to be more commonly male than female. This is especially the case for engineering and technology (85.4 percent of students in 2017-18 were male) and computing (85.3 per cent).

In 2016-17 and 2017-18, less than 1 per cent of undergraduate entrants had a gender different from assigned at birth

The proportion of undergraduate entrants who have a parent with a higher education qualification is slowly increasing (41.9 per cent in 2015-16, 43 per cent in 2017-18). (0.9 per cent and 0.8 per cent, respectively).

In the academic year 2017-18, for undergraduate entrants, the most common religion or belief response was no religion (44.5 per cent) followed by Christianity (29.1 per cent). Information refused was the third most common response (10.4 per cent) followed by Muslim (9.3 per cent).

The proportion of students identifying as bisexual, gay man or gay woman/lesbian has been increasing slowly and in 2017-18, 5.4 per cent of undergraduate entrants identified as one of these sexual orientations.

Other news

Immigration: Last week we briefly mentioned Sajid Javid wants restrictions on international students’ visas lifted to enable them to work in the UK for two years post-graduation. Here is the Financial Times article if you would like to read more on this.

Carers Innovation Fund: the Government launched the Carers Innovation Fund competition which aims to support accessible, carer-friendly communities and public services and provides evidence on effective interventions to support carers. The Government is looking for creative and innovative models that look beyond statutory services to ensure that carers are:

better recognised and connected

better able to juggle working and caring

better able to look after their own health and wellbeing

Proofreading:The Times explore how paid for proofreading services are likely to blur boundaries into contract cheating by providing a similar service to essay mills. Of course the reader comments on the article are as entertaining as the text itself.

Environment: Greg Clark spoke about his proposed legislation which aims to reduce Britain’s contribution to global warming. The statutory instrument aims to amend the Climate Change Act 2008 with a legally binding net zero emission target by 2050. (The Committee on Climate Change have confirmed the target is feasible and deliverable). Greg also confirmed the Government would lead a Treasury review into the costs of decarbonisation. The Minister went on to call for international action from global partners and said that whilst the UK “retain the ability in the Act to use international carbon credits that contribute to actions in other countries” the Government want them to take their own actions and do not intend to use those credits. Many members across the House echoed the sentiments of welcoming the legislation wholly but pushed the government to do more to ensure targets were met across all areas. Greg Clark was pushed to ban onshore wind, however, he said this strategy was off limits and it allowed the UK to become a world leader in this area.

Local: Local MP Simon Hoare was elected as the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

Social mobility: Justine Greening attacked the Treasury this week stating system change is needed to achieve social mobility outcomes. After eight years in government, overwhelmingly as a Cabinet Minister and running three different Departments, my conclusion is that we effectively need to abolish the Treasury in its current form. What we have right now is dysfunctional and not fit for purpose. It does not achieve the transformation in opportunity and social mobility that Britain needs. Greening went on to state the budget statement held up “the best ideas” so that the Chancellor could personally announce them through the Budget. She described the spending review as ‘dysfunctional’ and isn’t a fan of Augar which she said: “managed to waste well over a year coming up with obvious conclusions about additional funding for further education, but no doubt the Treasury is delighted that it can kick the issue into the long grass for another 12 to 18 months.” She spoke passionately about different ways the Treasury has failed on policy ideas, before suggesting “breaking up the Treasury, perhaps splitting it into a Ministry of Finance and an Economics Ministry, while merging the former with some elements of the Cabinet Office and having it report properly to the Prime Minister, so that it genuinely delivers a Prime Minister’s strategy for our country.”

Developing organisational strategy in uncertain competitive conditions can be problematic. Dr John Oliver’s (FMC) research into media management tools and scenario planning provides an insight into the problems faced by firms operating in dynamic markets and has been used to create a number of instrument impacts of international reach and significance.

James Gater,a former partner at Bell Pottinger, one of the world’s leading communication consultancies and now a partner at Special Projects Partners Ltd, commented that “The ideas presented in Dr Oliver’s research into ‘Media Management Tools’ used by business executives and his follow-up research into Scenario Planning was used to good effect. Indeed, we developed a Senior Communicators’ Development Programme in which he personally briefed senior Middle Eastern clients. Of particular note, I personally conducted scenario planning exercises, based directly Dr Oliver’s approach, with a diverse range of clients helping them see how their communications functions may need to adapt to future strategic challenges. These have included several government organisations (in South Africa, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), a political party in Pakistan and an agribusiness in Liberia amongst others”.

Dr Oliver leads the Advances in Media Management research group, a cross faculty cluster that seeks to advance knowledge and create economic and societal impact.

This week’s policy update is an early (almost) mid-week treat. There will be a bumper edition next week.

The Minister defends universities

Chris Skidmore was in front of Education Committee on Wednesday at an accountability hearing. You can watch it here. In the parts we watched, he answered questions on encouraging apprenticeships, and while he agreed, he also countered by talking about placements and sandwich years as another way to support employability. He also defended “post 92s” as being world class and criticised those who leap to conclusions based on whether universities are in the Russell Group or not. And he said that teaching was important and a focus only on research (and negative press about institutions) was not helpful.

On the Augar review his advisor said it is not finalised yet and the Minister said he hasn’t seen a draft. He expects there will be changes “within the financial envelope that has been set”. He also says the terms of reference remain the same for the review. That’s important because (set before the ONS decision on the deficit) they said:

The Review recommendations will be consistent with the Government’s fiscal policies to reduce the deficit and will not place a cap on the number of students who can benefit from post-18 education. Student contributions towards the cost of their studies, including the level, terms and duration of their contribution will be considered.

Separately he has given his second speech on research, which we cover in the next section, but he also delivered a speech on ‘going global’ in higher education, outlining his vision for the sector. In this speech he repeated a lot from other recent speeches and announcements, but also talked about TNE (trans national education) with enthusiasm and international research collaboration. He spoke of UK students becoming truly global citizens (and he didn’t say that they were citizens of nowhere). I think international student loneliness and mental health will be picked up increasingly alongside the other mental health stories. He mentioned “Step Change” and the University Mental Health Charter.

I was particularly shocked to learn, when I gave a speech at a Wonkhe conference on the ‘secret lives of students’ earlier this year, that over 15% of students said they felt lonely on a daily basis. And the figures were worse for international students. In fact, 20% of international students said they do not consider themselves to have any true friends at university. So, they can lack support networks and be more likely to have concerns over their mental health. That is why we are working closely with UK universities to embed the ‘Step Change’ programme within the sector, which calls on higher education leaders to adopt the mental health of students and staff as a strategic priority.

We remain open to exploring participation in the successor scheme to the current Erasmus+ Programme. But, as a responsible Government, we are also considering a wide range of options with regards to the future of international exchange and collaboration in education and training. This includes a potential domestic alternative to the Erasmus+ Programme. The potential benefits of the UK establishing its own international mobility scheme would include the ability to have a truly global exchange programme. And I will be driving forward this work in the coming months.

Research and research funding

New Research and Innovation Strategy: The Minister gave the second of his four planned speeches on research as the “Minister for the 2.4% [GDP investment in research and innocation]”. We reported last week’s in our update. This week’s was a little bit repetitive, if we’re honest [you can read the annotated version by HE for Research Professional here], but he did launch the International Research and Innovation Strategy which was trailed last week. As with all such documents it is long on images and rhetoric (and case studies) and short on specifics.

Some fun facts:

UK Global Research and Innovation – 6 per cent of global research publications are produced by the UK.

15 per cent of the world’s most highly cited articles come from the UK.

£23.7bn invested in R&I by UK businesses in 2017.

Top four in the Global Innovation Index.

Three universities ranked in the top ten globally.

Top ten in World Bank ease of doing business rankings.

There are seven themes each with a set of commitments:

A global partner: a partner for open, excellent and entrepreneurial research and innovation.

Our commitments:

One of our core objectives is to continue to collaborate with European partners on major science, research, and technology initiatives. We want to explore association to EU research and innovation programmes, including Horizon Europe and Euratom Research and Training, networks and infrastructure.

The new strategic partnership approach with Africa announced by the Prime Minister in 2018 is underpinned by a coherent cross government science, technology and innovation approach. …

We are creating a long-term research and innovation infrastructure roadmap, incorporating leading UK and international facilities as a cornerstone, to develop an effective strategy for future requirements and investment priorities.

We will use our extensive diplomatic networks, led by our Science and Innovation Network teams …. to enhance international cooperation, build partnerships and deliver this strategy.

We will work with our universities, research institutes, the academic and business communities to promote and facilitate international collaboration and use their networks and influence to build new partnerships that produce excellent research and innovation.

Bringing together the best talent from around the world

Our commitments

We are committed to funding research talent, including:

£1.3bn to attract and retain world class talent, through UKRI’s Future Leadership Fellowship and from the UK’s National Academies …

A new AI skills and talent package supported by industry funding and up to £110m government investment including: up to 200 new AI Masters places at UK universities; new PhDs for 1,000 students at 16 dedicated UKRI AI Centres for Doctoral Training; up to five AI research Fellowships created in collaboration with The Alan Turing Institute.

We are ensuring our visa arrangements support international researchers, innovators, their teams and their families.

A suite of UK based Fellowships for promising global researchers….

Commitments to build research capacity in partner countries and create a global network of promising early career researchers with links to the UK, including FLAIR Fellowships for African researchers.

Our Knowledge Exchange Framework will support closer working between industry and academia promoting a culture of continuous improvement in knowledge exchange.

In the UK’s Industrial Strategy we have set out the goal of making the UK the most innovative country in the world by 2030.

We have established hubs of tech innovation throughout the UK that are world-leading. …

We are working towards a global digital marketplace supporting greater transparency in public procurement…

We have an extensive Catapult network …

We are extending Innovate UK’s Global Expert Missions and Business Innovation programmes …

Through the UK Chairmanship of and participation in EUREKA we are working with members to develop a global framework for business-led R&D and innovation collaboration, and have committed a further £20m to support international collaboration through EUREKA

The upper limits on the Enterprise Investment Schemes and Venture Capital Trust investment reliefs were doubled from April 2018 for knowledge-intensive companies.

British Business Bank’s Enterprise Capital Funds programme …

We will work with businesses, our leading universities, research institutes and UK Research & Innovation to make the UK an even more attractive location for R&D activity. …

Global Entrepreneur Programme helps overseas entrepreneurs and early stage technology businesses that want to relocate to the UK.

R&D Tax Credit relief for SMEs and R&D Expenditure Credit …

A global platform for the technologies of tomorrow

Our commitments

We are bringing forward plans to transform the UK’s regulatory system to enable innovation…. including through a Regulators’ Pioneer Fund to support regulator-led initiatives.

We will work with other countries to develop a balanced and fit for purpose international intellectual property framework that maximises the benefits of innovation and creativity. We are establishing a new partnership with the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution to develop regulation ….

We will promote better governance frameworks around the globe through the FCO‘s network of overseas posts, and BSI’s leadership role in European and international standards.

We will provide a safe and secure environment for research and innovation through physical and cyber protection.

A partner for a sustainable future

Our commitments

The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund …

The UK’s commitment in law of 0.7 per cent of our Gross National Income to Official Development Assistance ….

We have invested across government in targeted programmes for international research and innovation for sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals.

We are committed to bring a whole of government approach to maximise the impact of international collaborative programmes…..

An advocate for better research governance, ethics and impact

Our commitments

The UK will play a full and active role in the global governance of scientific research and innovation organisations through critical global fora [there’s a huge list]

New Inquiry into Research Funding: The Science and Technology Committee have launched a new inquiry to assess the impact of potential changes in funding on the ability of UK universities to conduct high-quality research.

The committee will begin taking oral evidence on 21st May 2019 and will likely cover;

What proportion of England and Wales’ overall science research is done in universities? How much of that is funded directly by universities?

Has the establishment of UKRI affected the way in which universities apply for funding for research? Have the changes been beneficial?

The Government have committed to a target of 2.4% of GDP to be invested in research and development by 2027. What will be the balance between investment in research-active universities and industry? What are the expected changes to research funding in universities?

Would the reduction or abolition of tuition fees impact funding in such a way as to affect the ability of universities to conduct high-quality scientific research?

If Brexit led to a reduction in EU students studying in England and Wales, would that affect science research capabilities in universities?

CBI report on R&D: The Confederation of British Industry has published a report on the ‘Changing Nature of R&D’, which highlights that despite the Government’s aim of raising R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027, it is not expected to reach this level until at least 2053. As part of this, the CBI has called on the Government to commit to making a number of commitments to enhancing the UK’s research and innovation ecosystem:

The Government should agree to setting out a comprehensive and future focused road underpinned by commitment to increasing public funding,

The Government should include measures to increase the number of businesses utilising the potential of data and analytics to at least 3%

This can be achieved by delivering a ‘competency building’ package to support businesses to understand and unlock value from their data.

The CBI calls on the Government to simplify the process behind businesses ability to navigate innovation and support productive partnerships.

This can be achieved by establishing a new ‘business advisory group’ for UKRI.

Implementing a business development and outreach for Innovate UK

Increase visibility and simplicity of government and university innovation support.

The CBI added that the UK should consolidate its position as a global leader in data-driven R&D by setting out ‘ambitious and creative policy’

As part of this, the Government should deliver the world’s most ‘competitive R&D tax credit by ensuring that it recognises the growing importance of data-driven R&D’

The Government should also help businesses embrace experimental policy approaches.

Knowledge Exchange

Last week we mentioned that UUK and GuildHE consultation on the draft Knowledge Exchange Concordat, linked to the KEF. RDS will be leading on preparation of a BU response.

A joint UUK/Research England working group has developed a Knowledge Exchange Concordat for universities and colleges in England. UUK are doing the consultation with GuildHE for Research England. The PDF consultation document is here

The Concordat aims to:

help higher education institutions and their staff and students enhance clarity of mission

give partners an accurate representation of the approaches and strengths of individual higher education institutions

provide clear indicators of their approaches to developing and improving performance

give governing bodies and government broad confidence in the activity that is taking place in higher education institutions

Principles – The eight guiding principles are:

Mission: Knowledge exchange is a recognised part of the overall university strategy. We have a clear understanding of the institutional role and the purpose of KE and whom the intended beneficiaries are.

Policies: We have clear policies on all the types of KE that we undertake and we ensure they are understood by staff, students, collaborators and beneficiaries.

Engagement: We have clear access points, engagement mechanisms and policies developed to suit the needs of a wide range of beneficiaries working with institutions as publicly funded bodies.

Working effectively: We make sure that our partners and beneficiaries understand the ethical and charitable regulatory environments in which our institution operates and we take steps to maximise the benefit to them within that context.

Capacity building: We ensure that our staff and students are developed and trained appropriately to understand and undertake their roles and responsibilities in the delivery of successful KE.

Recognition and rewards: We recognise the achievements of our staff and students who perform high-quality KE activities.

Continuous improvement: We proactively strive to share best practice with our peers and have established processes for learning from this.

Evaluating success: We undertake regular institutional and collective monitoring and review of our strengthening KE performance using this concordat and through regional, national or international benchmarks to inform the development and execution of a programme of continuous improvement.

For each principle, a set of possible enablers is proposed. These are examples of good practice and give an indication of the sort of activities that could contribute towards the achievement of the aims of the concordat. They should not be considered as a prescribed set of activities and they do not represent a checklist against which universities can be judged.

Universities that sign up commit to:

Making it clear to staff, students and partners what they will do, what they expect within universities and how they expect to work with partners

The regular evaluation of approaches and processes to ensure continuous improvement in what is done

Adopting the principles outlined in the KE concordat as a framework for effective knowledge exchange

Publicly committing to the KE concordat

Conducting an evaluation of their KE strategy and practice, using the KE concordat

Producing and publishing a short action plan that identifies priorities, good and innovative practice and areas where improvement is needed

Considering and responding to feedback and advice from the Independent Panel.

Graduate Outcomes

The Resolution Foundation published Growing Pains – the impact of leaving education during a recession on earnings and employment. It explores the severe effect experienced by those leaving education during the 2008-09 recession and highlights that the negative effects were enduring – around 6% less hourly pay for graduates (20% less for sub-HE qualification) with these effects continuing for 6 years and the likelihood of graduates to be in a low paying occupation rose by 30% (and continued for 7 years). The report says:

…we find that people ‘trading down’ in terms of the occupations they enter after leaving education, coupled with pay restraint in mid-paid roles, are main drivers of poor pay outcomes for those entering the labour market in a recession.

Students graduating during the 2008 financial crisis aftermath experienced higher unemployment and poorer job prospects than their slightly younger peers. The report also highlighted that those who opted to taker a lower paid job (rather than unemployment) during their early career were blighted by poor future earnings trajectories and their job prospects to break into higher skilled more lucrative employment were damaged.

Inequality – a report and a new review

You can read the report here. It is only 34 pages long and an interesting read. Some points here:

Income inequality in the UK is high by international standards. Of other major economies, only the US has higher income inequality. However, Inequality in total net household income has changed little since rising sharply in the 1980s. The UK system of state transfers – especially tax credits – has been very successful at mitigating rising inequality.

Deaths from suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related liver disease have been rising among middle-aged people in England – similar to (though on a smaller scale than) what has happened in the US since the turn of the century, where the trend has been shown to be concentrated heavily among the lower-educated population. In the UK, this new trend has contributed to a small rise in middle-age mortality overall in the last few years, bringing to an end decades of continual improvement.

Women’s employment has risen dramatically from 57% in 1975 to 78% in 2017. But whilst white British women have nearly closed the employment gap with men, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women are half as likely to work as men of the same ethnic group.

The gender hourly wage gap is strongly associated with childbirth and rises from less than 10% at the point of childbirth to 30% 12 years after the first child is born. This reflects an extraordinary lack of earnings progression for mothers, particularly those who work part-time.

There are stark geographical inequalities in the UK. Average weekly earnings in London are 66% higher than those in the North East. Men in the most affluent areas can expect to live nearly 10 years longer than those in the most deprived areas, and this gap is widening.

Inequalities in different dimensions – income, work, mental and physical health, families and relationships – are likely to reinforce one another. Inequality cannot be reduced to one dimension and is instead the culmination of various forms of privilege and disadvantage stemming across wealth, politics, social networks and cultural capital.

The last few decades have seen profound changes in the labour market. Earnings growth at the top has vastly outpaced growth in the middle, whilst real earnings have actually fallen for lowpaid men (Blundell et al., 2018).

Globalisation may have further exacerbated inequalities in earnings: competition for internationally mobile executives drove up top incomes, whilst import competition and offshoring put pressure on working-class jobs.

Union membership has declined dramatically over the last few decades. At the peak of union density in the 1980s, every other British worker belonged to a union; today, only one in four British workers do. In the private sector, that figure is less than one in seven. Falling union membership may have removed constraints on wage dispersion, increased the share of surplus going to executives, or more generally reduced the political clout of ordinary workers against other dominant groups

The share of all turnover captured by the largest 100 firms in the UK has risen by more than a third since the late 1990s. The average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company is now earning 145 times the average salary, up from 47 times in 1998.

Many of the sources of the divide are indeed global, but levels of inequalities vary greatly between countries. Government policies can play an important role in responding to structural forces and mediating their damaging effects on inequality. In some cases, government policies may themselves be the culprits for rising inequalities. Differences in tax and benefit systems will lead to different patterns of inequality. Education policy also plays a role. The vast inequalities by education in the US – in health, deaths of despair, marriage and life satisfaction – may partly reflect a large gap in earnings between high- and low-educated people, which has been rising since the 1980s.

High-quality vocational education can improve prospects for those who choose not to go down an academic path, and retraining can help workers displaced by globalisation and technological change.

Stronger trade unions can tip power back towards employees – in the Nordic countries, between 52% and 86% of all employees belong to a trade union

The report sets the stage for a 5 year review be chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Prof Sir Angus Deaton and is expected to be the UK’s biggest analysis of inequality.

A brief Brexit mention

Over last weekend Kier Starmer, Shadow Brexit SoS said no deal would be passed by Labour MPs without a confirmatory Brexit referendum. Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson spoke on Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday to reiterate this message (although in a toned down version). Starmer said on Sunday that cross-party talks would end this week unless an offer or breakthrough occurred.

On Saturday Tony Blair took to the Guardian stating Labour should never have put itself in such a position of destructive indecision. His article aimed to encourage everyone to vote (against Brexit extremism), arguing that the final decisions in Westminster on the Brexit deal will be influenced by the European election results.

Damien Hinds appeared on Sunday’s Andrew Marr show and said that the European elections could be an ultimate protest vote opportunity.

Theresa May is expected to set out the timescale for her departure when she meets the 1922 Committee (Conservative backbenchers) on Thursday.

And as we go to press [early this week] the government is saying that they will put the EU withdrawal legislation before Parliament in early June, by-passing the meaningful vote. They have said that before. A helpful summary from Dods:

Labour has confirmed it would not back this deal without a cross-party deal agreed, and ERG Whip Steve Baker said bringing the Bill back would “eradicate the Government’s majority” by alienating the DUP and Brexiteers: “Unless she can demonstrate something new that addresses the problem of the backstop, then it is highly likely her deal will go down to defeat once again.”

The UK needs to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in order to move onto the next steps of the Brexit phase and to take the UK out of the EU in UK law. The legislation would make the citizens’ rights part of the agreement directly enforceable in UK courts, and set their relationship with the EU’s Court of Justice, as well “divorce payments”, and give effect to the so-called backstop plan for the Irish border.

The Bill will be amendable and without substantial changes or cross party breakthrough then it is very unlikely that the Bill will pass. The rationale behind the move by May might be that the deadline for a new vote could inject a sense of urgency into cross-party talks, or it could be an attempt to fend off calls for her to immediately stand down as PM. She is due to appear before the 1922 executive committee tomorrow and was expected to set out a timeframe for her resignation.

Access and Foundation courses

For the past few years the number of students studying Access to Higher Education Diplomas… has been declining, while the number on integrated foundation years has been increasing. This means that in 2017-18, the number of entrants to Access courses was approximately equal to the number of entrants to integrated foundation year courses. The number of entrants to Access courses declined by 18 per cent between 2012-13 and 2017-18, from 36,880 to 30,410, while the number of integrated foundation year entrants almost tripled from 10,430 to 30,030.

This report shows that there are similarities between Access to Higher Education Diplomas and integrated foundation year courses, but also important differences. In particular, the wider geographical spread of Access courses means they may be suitable for a wider range of potential higher education students and enable progress on to many different courses, whereas foundation years may be more likely to attract students with a higher level of commitment to taking degree-level study at a specific provider.

The key findings of this report are as follows:

Two-fifths of Access students held a qualification equivalent to A-levels before taking the course, compared with four-fifths of foundation year students.

Most Access course entrants were over 21, whereas the majority of those starting foundation years were 20 or younger.

Access courses were almost entirely taught at further education colleges, while integrated foundation years were predominantly taught at higher education institutions.

This means that students usually had to travel further to take a foundation year than an Access course.

Subjects allied to medicine were the most common subject area for entrants to Access courses, whereas business and administrative studies were the most common for integrated foundation years.

The proportion of students who progressed to a degree programme in the four years following an Access course (62 per cent) was lower than the proportion who progressed after a foundation year (79 per cent).

Students from both courses sometimes went on to a degree course after two or more years, rather than immediately.

The proportion of entrants who progressed to degree-level study has remained broadly stable over time for both types of course.

Students who started without A-level or equivalent qualifications had a lower rate of progression to degree-level study (55 per cent for Access courses, 61 per cent for foundation years), than those with A-levels (71 and 89 per cent respectively).

Those who progressed to full-time degree-level study after a foundation year were more likely to complete their degree within four years (63 per cent) than those on a degree after an Access course (53 per cent).

Of those who qualified with a degree, a slightly higher proportion of Access course students achieved first or upper second class degrees(70 per cent) than those who studied a foundation year (67 per cent).

Between 2010/11 and 2018/19, real terms funding per student in school sixth forms, sixth form colleges, and further education (FE) colleges declined substantially, by 16 per cent, from £5,900 to £4,960. This is twice the rate that the overall schools budget fell by between 2009/10 and 2017/18 (8 per cent).

Funding in school sixth forms declined by 26 per cent per full time student from 2010/11 to 2018/19. In the further education sector (sixth form colleges and FE colleges), funding declined by 18 per cent per full time student. Within this, funding for sixth form colleges fell faster than in FE colleges.

Despite funding being shifted towards disadvantaged students over this period, students in all institutions have experienced real terms funding cuts.

16-19 education has been the biggest real terms loser of any phase of education since 2010/11, but it has also suffered from a long run squeeze in funding: 30 years ago, 16-19 funding was far higher (almost 1.5 times) than secondary school funding, but is now lower.

Provision in sixth forms and colleges

Students in 16-19 education are receiving fewer hours of learning: learning hours with a teacher for students in all institutions fell by 9 per cent between 2012/13 and 2016/17. The deterioration of 16-19 institutions’ finances may exacerbate these trends further.

This fall in taught hours is particularly prominent in academic subjects: level 3 subjects (A level or equivalent) have seen a sharp decline in hours by 21 per cent between 2012/13 and 2016/17.

For academic subjects, there has been a large decline in AS provision, which has not been offset by rises in the number of hours elsewhere. This may raise concerns about the curriculum becoming even narrower: upper secondary education in England is already narrow compared to leading education nations in the OECD.

Policy recommendations

The government should urgently review the adequacy of 16-19 funding, to understand whether current funding rates are jeopardising the sector’s financial sustainability.

The government should assess the impact of 16-19 funding changes on curriculum breadth, ensuring that young people have a good choice of high quality post-16 academic and vocational qualifications.

The government should review the impact of funding changes on disadvantaged students and consider whether funding is supporting the government’s aim of narrowing the attainment gap.

Rethinking student loan communications

Martin Lewis, MoneySavingExpert.com, has been a vocal contributor to the student loans debate calling for both reform, greater understanding (e.g. of parental contribution) and for the way student loans are talked about to be changed to aid understanding. Martin Lewis is concerned that the word ‘debt’ is described puts off those from lower income backgrounds from considering university – stalling their chances at climbing the social mobility latter. He has collaborated with the Russell Group to pilot a new student loan statement named the Graduate Contribution Statement. He says the current student loan statement is not fit for purpose and the new statement aims to inform people of their personal situation whilst using this information to illustrate how student loan repayments really work over the short and long-term – cutting through the confusion. The report describes the features of the new statement:

Focuses on repayments to be made, more than the debt. For the majority of university leavers, their outstanding ‘debt’ is a mostly meaningless figure that bears only a loose resemblance to what they need to repay. However, this figure, and the interest added, is the primary data given on the current statement – leaving many unnecessarily scared.

Details how the repayments actually work. (The 9% above the threshold, currently £25,725 (in England & Wales) for 30 years, unless they clear the debt before that.) One of Martin Lewis campaigning points is to ensure this is well understood. He says:… whether you owe £10,000, £50,000 or £3 million – with a £30,000 salary, you repay £385 a year. The only impact the size of the ‘debt’ has is whether you’ll clear what you owe before it wipes.

Explains what contributions are made each month, and over the year. It shows how much graduates are actually repaying now on a monthly basis, instead of a long list of figures.

Predicts the total cost of higher education. As it’s predicted that 83% of university leavers will keep paying for the full 30 years, the total cost is often not related to the debt. The statement estimates the total amount they will repay within the 30 years, both in cash terms and real terms while factoring in inflation – based on their earnings trajectory.

The Graduate Contribution Statement was tested in an online survey of 5,796 students, former students and parents, some institutions (such as students unions) as well as in a series of student focus groups.

96% of respondents said the new information is clear

90% said the statement helped them understand the student finance system

91% success rate achieved when respondents were tested to ensure they really did understand the more complex information correctly

The report from the pilot statement will be presented to the Government, and to Philip Augar (Post-18 HE Education and funding review).

Martin Lewis said:

“The current student loan statement is a blunt, misleading tool that is financially dangerous. It prompts often-unnecessary fear and distress from some of the millions who receive it. And worse, as it’s a gateway document, this reverberates across society, and therefore risks wrongly deterring many from a future of higher education.

For the majority of university leavers, their outstanding ‘debt’ is a mostly meaningless figure that bears only a loose resemblance to what they need to repay. However, this figure, and the interest added, is the prime data covered on the current statement.

In fact, a more accurate name for the student loan system would be a ‘graduate contribution’, as what counts most isn’t what’s owed but what’s repaid, which depends almost entirely on earnings. Yet the last year’s annual repayment is only mentioned in passing, and there’s no attempt to explain total repayments over the life of the loan.

Focusing on the wrong info can have damaging consequences for individuals. One woman told me how the fear of the growing interest on her statement meant she used an inheritance to overpay thousands. But as she was in a low-earning profession, with little likelihood of ever clearing much, her overpayment wouldn’t have any impact on what she’d repay in future – so she’d simply flushed the cash away.

Therefore, with the Augar report on further and higher education due, we are urgently calling on it and the Government to look at using our statement as a basis to redesign the official statement. This would improve understanding and decision-making for past, present and future students alike.”

David Thompson, Senior Policy Analyst at the Russell Group, added:

“The feedback it [the new statement] received through both our online survey and the focus groups we conducted was overwhelmingly positive. Respondents praised the new, expected lifetime repayments feature and the improved information about the 30-year forgiveness period as particularly helpful. I hope that the Department for Education and the Student Loans Company can act swiftly to adopt the best features of our proposed new statement. Doing so would not only be in the clear interest of graduates currently receiving statements, but may also help reassure both current and prospective students about the way student finance really works.”

Wonkhe Daily

If you’d like to receive the Wonkhe daily policy summary email you can sign yourself up here – it’s free for BU staff and students!

Other news

Funding: Late last week the OfS announced the £1.24 billion recurrent grant funding for HE providers which supports high quality teaching and learning. The budget has increased by 1.5% (+£19 million) from the 2018-19 level. Notable is the increase (4.7%) to £713 million for the high cost medicine, science, technology and engineering programmes. £337 million for boosting equality of opportunity and promoting greater choice in HE, of this £60 million is dedicated to the National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP). It is stated that the OfS will be reviewing the funding method in the future to ensure the post-19 education and funding review outcomes are addressed.

Wonkhe report on the for-profit providers that will receive the direct grant in 2019-20. that £10 million has been allocated to 25 providers that are being funded directly by the OfS for the first time in 2019-20. These include the British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM), a music college owned by Sovereign Capital; Arden University and the University of Law, both owned by for-profit group Global University Systems; SAE Education; and Pearson College – all of which were previously able to access student loans but were not previously in receipt of direct grants.

FE/HE Collaboration?: New Chief Exec of the University Alliance, Vanessa Wilson, previously Commercial Director at UK Sport, blogs for Wonkhe drawing parallels between elite sports and the HE sector:

I see a close alignment with universities’ and colleges’ shared mission to fight for equality of opportunity and social justice, along with a collective goal to give universal access to great teaching, training and opportunities, regardless of gender, background, age, ethnicity, ability or disability.

We need a coherent, cohesive and integrated system, with long-term investment across early years, schools, colleges, adult education and our universities. And on tertiary education, we need cross-party consensus, a joined-up strategy and commitment on the way forward, not continually chopping and changing policy direction – another reason why the long delay in Augar being published is so frustrating.

On the divide between FE and HE she says: I am genuinely surprised by the extent the two sectors allow ourselves to be played off against one another, getting into a bidding war rather than arguing for sustained funding across the board. People, whether doing a college course or university degree, have the same aspirations, ambitions and ability to succeed.

Immigration: Ex-HE Minister, Sam Gyimah, spoke in defence of Universities in the Financial Times: I know from my time as a minister that no one in government ever took a decision deliberately to undermine the competitive position of our universities. Speaking of how the immigration policy is detrimental to universities Sam continued: you get a barely noticeable process of de-prioritisation, in which strategic decisions follow the path of least resistance. And in the current anti-elitist climate it is unfashionable to defend universities…Even in a successful sector you need to keep swimming to stay afloat — we assume our universities will continue to do well because they have always done so. This is alarming.

Gyimah highlights how the Netherlands will have the most English speaking universities in the European block and that others, worldwide, will seek to exploit the gaps we open as Brexit concludes. He says ‘we’ (presumably the Government and universities) have to be become more adept at global outreach and play the long game. Sam urges Government to bring together migration policy with export opportunities, the potential for young Britons to live and study abroad and moves to make it easier for our universities to expand overseas. Our reputation as an educational superpower is based on attracting the talented and the entrepreneurial...if we are to succeed as a country that lives by its wits and stands at the forefront of science, technology and learning, then a world class university sector must lie at the heart of a positive vision of Britain’s future.

OfS Pilot Postgraduate survey: A Wonkhe blog highlights a pilot OfS survey on the postgraduate experience outside of the standard NSS realm. It includes new questions on pre-course information and expectations, how cutting edge the programme offer is, whether there is engagement with experts in the field but from outside the HE sector (fitting with a key message in last week’s Universities Minister’s speech – which wanted to see more PhD graduates pursing a research career in industry), plus mental health questions. In the blog Jim Dickinson speculates what it could mean for the future of the NSS and concludes: The morphing of NSS into a tool that can test things that OfS thinks are important like VFM or student wellbeing is well under way. And whilst to date it’s mainly been used by OfS within the TEF, it’s starting to become clear that NSS will soon be a much more wide ranging tool for testing OfS’ success at meeting its objectives.

Research

The Universities Minister, has delivered the first in a series of four planned speeches on how the UK can best achieve its ambition to invest 2.4% of GDP in R&D by 2027. It was a surprising speech in some ways, short on announcements, although there were some, and long on wishful thinking. We’ve pulled out some bits below. For a healthy dose of cynicism/realism we recommend the annotated version by HE for Research Professional.

Investment – To achieve our target of 2.4%, total UK R&D investment would need to rise to around £60bn in today’s money. More than double our current investment levels. This would require us to have invested an additional sum of over £80bn cumulatively each year from 2017 across the public and private sectors.

People – It doesn’t matter how much money we pump into R&D over the years ahead, it won’t make the intended difference if we don’t have the right people in place. Ensuring a strong pipeline of talent will be essential for bolstering the UK’s research prowess. We are also going to have to substantially increase the numbers of people we have working in R&D in the same period – perhaps by as much as 50%. To put that in figures, that means we need to find at least another 260,000 researchers to work in R&D across universities, across business and across industry.

International staff and students – We are making it easier for international graduates to move into skilled work. International students studying for undergraduate level and above will be able to apply for a visa three months before their course finishes – enabling them to take up skilled work after their degree. They will also be able to apply for a skilled work visa out-of-country under the same preferential conditions as they would experience if they were to apply for a visa in-country. In addition, a reformed sponsorship system will provide a simplified and more streamlined system. This will be less burdensome for employers and will enable businesses to harness the talent they need more easily. We set out a clear ambition in our International Education Strategy earlier this spring: to grow the numbers of international students studying in UK universities to 600,000 by the end of the next decade.

Supporting Researchers

Our current research culture relies on dominant power structures, where doctoral candidates and post-docs are largely dependent on supervisors or PIs for references and progression. This puts the power firmly in other people’s hands. Is it any wonder, then, that less than half of doctoral researchers report they would be likely to disclose any mental health and wellbeing issues to their supervisors? This closed culture urgently needs to change. So, I hope future joint work by the Office for Students (OfS) and Research England into the mental health and wellbeing of doctoral researchers can identify good practice to take forward in this area.

….the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, first launched in 2008. …I am pleased that an independent review of the Concordat has just taken place to ensure it is up-to-date to meet the needs of today’s researchers. And I look forward to seeing the revised version of the Concordat when it is published later this summer. As Universities and Science Minister, I am serious about taking the Concordat forward. And I am pleased to be hosting a high-level meeting with the Chair of the Concordat Strategy Group, Professor Julia Buckingham. Alongside Sir Patrick Vallance and other key sector leaders, to discuss how we can further improve research careers in the UK.

I also encourage the OfS, Research England, and UKRI as a whole to look more widely at how the implementation of current policies affect researchers on the ground. The three higher education excellence frameworks – namely the REF, TEF and the KEF – are all integral to the way we govern and fund higher education, science, research and innovation. But we need to make sure they are not disproportionately affecting early career researchers and putting extra strains on their work. The recent headlines about universities spending around £87m on non-disclosure agreements since 2017 doesn’t help us to project an image of a sector that cares for its employees.

Academia in industry

For too long, there has been a stigma in this country around pursuing non-academic research careers. So, we should never look down on early career researchers if they opt for a career outside academia. Rather, we should actively encourage our PhDs and post-docs to see the merits of pursuing an R&D career in other sectors and industries. For one, we need to stop talking about jobs outside academia as being ‘second choice careers’ or ‘Plan B options’. For our 2.4% target to work, we need people to be actively considering research careers across the entire science and innovation system.

So, isn’t it high time we start to better connect graduates with the evident skills gaps we are experiencing right across our labour market? Yet, this isn’t going to be easy when many of their main role models inside universities know very little about careers in industry. And are themselves either unaware or unconvinced of the strength of research positions outside academia. There are schemes that aim to address this issue – such as the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Visiting Professors scheme. This funds senior industry practitioners to participate in course development, face-to-face teaching and the mentoring of Engineering undergraduates at a host university. It is a great programme, but it is not widespread practice. The difficulties aren’t just on the side of universities. Some employers are unused to recruiting PhDs and don’t fully understand the benefits that those with higher academic qualifications can bring to their workforce. I think of this as the ‘graduate paradox’ – the higher the academic qualifications you have, the less professionally qualified you may seem. This, I feel, is a particular UK problem we need to address.

Gaps – We still have some way to go to eradicate gender pay gaps in the sector and increase the proportion of women in academic and research leadership. Not to mention the number of Black and Ethnic Minority role models that will inspire others and show them a research career can really be for people like them.

Additional points:

The 41 winners of the first ever Future Leaders Fellowships have been announced. The fellowships aim to develop early career researchers who will become world-leaders in their fields, intending for their research to maintain the UK’s reputation for being at the forefront of science and innovation. The winners share £40 million, with the scheme costing £900 million over 3 years. The projects funded include using cloud computing to monitor changes of all glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic and how children’s adventurous play can lower levels of anxiety in young people.

First call for the new Stephen Hawking Fellowships issued. Working with the Hawking family, UKRI will support up to 50 postdoctoral scientists in theoretical physics over the next five years.

Italian Partnership – Research England have announced their partnership with the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems, ANVUR, which will support research assessment and the evaluation of knowledge exchange in English and Italian universities. David Sweeney, Executive Chair of Research England commented: “ANVUR is at the leading edge in the international landscape of knowledge transfer assessment and it was very helpful to discuss Italy’s research evaluation.”

Master’s Loans

The DfE have published the Postgraduate Master’s Loan evaluation. The Master’s Degree Loan Scheme was launched by the Government in June 2016, and was the first time that Government provided finance to contribute to costs for postgraduate master’s study. The aims of the loan were to:

Increase take up of master’s courses

Enable progression onto master’s courses for those who could not afford to self-finance or would have to delay starting to save up for a master’s course

Improve the supply of highly skilled individuals to the UK economy

The evaluation follows up the first cohort of master’s students who started in 2016/17 with the new loan and found positive outcomes.

Data from the HESA Student Record shows that there was a substantial increase in the overall number of Master’s students enrolling at English HEIs. This growth was driven by a 36% increase in enrolments from England-domiciled loan eligible students. (However, these figures may be overinflated as 2015/16 master’s students may have deferred starting their study a year to benefit from the loan in the following year. The report notes BAME students were particularly likely to do this with 61% reporting they deferred entry specifically for this reason.)

Most HEIs interviewed (75%) said the number of enrolments from students onto courses eligible for postgraduate loans increased in 2016/17. Among those which reported an increase in numbers, the majority (84%) attributed this at least in part to the introduction of the Master’s Loan.

Students themselves confirmed the importance of the Loan in enabling them to study. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of students starting their course in 2016/17 felt that they would have been unable to undertake their specific Master’s course without the Master’s Loan, while around a third (36%) agreed that they would “never even thought about studying a Master’s” if the Master’s loan had not been available.

While there were no substantial changes to the age or gender profile of students, the proportion of Black students increased substantially between 2015/16 and 2016/17 (but see above).

Quicker – Analysis of the HESA student record indicates a trend towards a greater proportion of full-time study. While the proportion of loan-eligible England-domiciled students studying full-time remained relatively constant in the period prior to the introduction of the loan (at 54-56%), this proportion increased to 62% in 2016/17.

Sooner – 90% of master’s loan recipients “agreed that the Master’s Loan had enabled 14 them to begin postgraduate study sooner”. Students in receipt of the Loan were more likely to have progressed from undergraduate to postgraduate study within a year (48%) than those not in receipt of the Loan (23%). The main reason for this given by students in the qualitative interviews was that without the Master’s Loan, they would have had to spend several years building their savings in order to afford it

Students in receipt of the Loan were more likely to say that their main reason for studying was to improve their employment prospects (20% compared with 12% of those not in receipt of the Loan). Prior to loan introduction (2013/14 cohort) more stated their main motivation was interest in the subject.

Almost all students (94%) expected to receive at least one benefit as a result of their programme, five years after completing their study. 74% believed they would be earning more money, and a similar proportion (73%) expected to have more job choices. Being in a more senior role and being in a more specialist role were each mentioned by 70% of students, and 68% anticipated they would be in a higher pay band.

There was no change in the proportion receiving either funding from their HEI or funding from their employer to pay for tuition fees. Hence, so far, there is no indication of the Master’s Loan ‘crowding out’ other sources of funding.

70% of Master’s starters in 2016/17 also worked (35% FT, 35% PT) – it was only 58% that worked in 2013/14. The evaluation notes a higher proportion of starters in 2016/17 funded all or part of their tuition fees through employment than the comparator group of 2013/14. 52% of students stated that without the loan for their living expenses or fees they may not have been able to undertake the course. However, 46% would have self-funded or found other methods to fund their course leading to questions on whether the loan is providing funding for those who could have afforded the course anyway.

Interestingly (messages for UG differential fees perhaps?) were that 41% of loan students would have changed their study to afford a masters (a) 25% choosing a cheaper course, (b) 19% choosing a different course, (c) 22% choose same course but at a different institution. BAME students were most likely (33%) to change their plans.

The master’s loan contributes up to £10,000 towards the fees/living expenses of master’s study. However, most respondents stated it was not enough and the difficulties of working coupled with the intensity of master’s study meant they had to rely on parents to top them up financially. There are potentially messages in here about inclusivity, hidden barriers to disadvantaged students, and potentially an influence on dropout rates.

The evaluation suggested there is evidence that the Loan will help the sustainability of the HE sector. Most HEIs benefited from increased student volumes in 2016/17 and half reported that they believe the Loan will lead to increased revenue for them. There is evidence to suggest that it has benefitted medium-tariff institutions in particular.

There is some evidence that the Loan has had an effect of increasing fees for Master’s courses (HEIs more likely to report increases on these courses (57%) than on courses not eligible for fees (41%)). DfE note this may warrant further investigation.

TEF update

Do you know your pilot from your parliamentary review? What are the metrics used in the latest version of TEF and did you know that the criteria have changed? We’ve been updating staff at BU on the latest on the TEF, and on the staff intranet policy pages you can find links to our latest slides and a more detailed briefing note, as well as a link to BU’s submission to the Parliamentary review call for views.

Election fever

Everyone has a view on what happened in the local elections and what it means for national politics – it means get on with Brexit, it means abandon Brexit, it means everyone is just fed up and protest voting for smaller parties and independents…. Your policy team are a bit idealistic sometimes (despite watching a lot of politics), and we are subscribers to the “people are probably generally voting on local issues locally” theory. We hope so – because these local politicians will be responsible for things that will happen locally for the next 4 years. So feelings about the council mergers and hospital changes, for example, will have had an effect in Dorset and BCP.

Of course national politics will have had an impact. There may be a general dissatisfaction with the Conservatives and some of that may be Brexit-related, but it could also be driven by concerns about social care and local authority funding more generally. It doesn’t seem to make sense that across the country many people abandoned the Tories for the Lib Dems if they genuinely want a no-deal Brexit. They may have been formerly disaffected Lib Dem voters going home – but in that case they almost certainly don’t want a no deal Brexit. The focus on climate change recently will of course have helped the Greens – people voting for green candidates who will drive local changes.

Brexit is still missing

The impasse continues. It seems unlikely that there will be a breakthrough in the short term. It could be a long summer of speculation and not much happening until another frenzy of last-minute-itus breaks out in September ahead of the Halloween deadline.

Last weekend Theresa May came under further pressure to resign, or to state a specific date for her departure. TM at least thinks that the local election results were a verdict on how she (and Parliament) has handled Brexit. She apologised for poor Conservative local election results (the Conservatives lost 1,300+ seats) stating: It is clear that the voters delivered their judgment in large part based on what is happening – or not happening – at Westminster. And, as Prime Minister, I fully accept my share of the responsibility for that. Meanwhile Jeremy Hunt and Dominic Raab appeared in high-profile newspaper profile pieces over the bank holiday weekend with their families – not too subtle positioning for an upcoming leadership contest. The PM continues to refuse to set out a timetable for her departure and is unlikely to step down until the Withdrawal Agreement is passed. Her spokesperson said she is here to deliver Brexit in phase one and then she will make way for phase two.

It has been confirmed that the UK will participate in the EU elections. However apparently Theresa May intends to make a fourth attempt to pass her Brexit deal through Parliament ratifying the deal by end of June so that UK MEPs do not take their seats in July. Maybe.

Theresa May is expected to offer a customs union offer to Labour (for a temporary period); however, the Labour/Conservative front bench talks have extended beyond the original timescale and the issue of a second referendum continues to be a sticking point. There has been no breakthrough with the Government insisting the negotiations have been constructive and detailed, however, Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour) was critical stating the Government had made no movement on their red lines. Talks continue…

In the meantime:

The UK Government has signed a deal with Ireland to guarantee reciprocal Irish and British citizens rights are retained in each country in the event of no-deal.

EU Settlement Scheme: The EU settlement scheme is now fully open and live. The Home Office communications state that during the testing phase 95% of EU citizens were able to use the mobile app to prove their identity remotely within 10 minutes. The application link is here.

Mental Health & Well-being

HEPI have issued a policy note Measuring well-being in HE covering HE staff and students. They argue for a differentiation between mental health and well-being so that the sector can better consider and understand the broader overall health of staff and students. They recommend more data is collected and published, ideally the markers being consistent across the UK and multi-year for applicants and graduates (as well as students and staff):

“Consistency across the UK allows for comparison in well-being between the different regulatory and funding systems across the four countries. International measurements would similarly allow for comparison between different models of higher education. Data collectors should work together to enable tracking of cohorts, allowing us to track the same cohort of students and staff over time.”

Rachel Hewitt, HEPI, author of the Policy Note said: ‘If we are to get a grip on the mental health crisis in young people that is heavily impacting on universities, we need to be collecting the right information to understand it. At the moment statistics on well-being and mental health are often combined, despite these being two separate issues with different ways they can be tackled. For universities to take the necessary action to address this issue, they need to better understand what they’re dealing with.

It is shocking that we have no public information on the well-being of staff that work in our universities. If universities are collecting this information, they are not being open about what the results are showing. This is at a time when staff in universities continue to be under pressure, with increasing workloads and insecure contracts rife. We need a consistent, public dataset on the well-being of university staff.’

In the meantime, the role of sport at university has been highlighted: Wonkhe has two articles on sport via its new Student Union service. Ben Vulliarmy, CEO of the SU at the University of York, writes about their Varsity programme with Lancaster (by the way, congratulations to BU for this week’s resounding win against Solent in our own Varsity event – well played all). And Richard Medcalf of the University of Wolverhampton writes about the need for evidence if sport is to be taken seriously as a contributor to student (and staff) outcomes:

At Wolverhampton we’re trying a few small steps to make this happen. We’ve developed a university sports board to connect this agenda into the decision making bodies of the university. We’ve combined the academic provision of sport with the participatory and performance arms of our offer to students and staff, to align the intentions of both under one organisational framework. And, importantly, we’re attaching student sport engagement to our student records system so we can see if there’s any relationship between students who participate and the wider university KPIs.

Care Experienced Students

The Centre for Social Justice have released 12 By 24 revealing that despite 10 years of intervention still only 6% of care leavers are attending University. It states: Looked After Children aren’t less clever than other children they are just less lucky and a care leaver is more likely to end up in a prison cell than a lecture theatre. The publication aims to increase care leavers at universities to 12 by 24.

This report shows that too many young people growing up in care feel university isn’t for them. They told us it is simply not what happens when you leave the care system…Improving attainment at school will always be the best thing we can do to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds get on. This report sets out the extent to which care experienced children still fall behind their peers. The message from a roundtable of experts conducted during this report was clear: If we want to see more children from disadvantaged backgrounds accessing university and higher education, we need to engage our young people in care much earlier to ensure that where they have fallen behind, they are given the help they need to catch up. The evidence contained in this report shows that if we act early enough, we will see more young people leaving the care system and entering higher education. Among all the facts and figures, this report presents a simple challenge to government and the higher education sector to do more to help young people who have had the worst start in life to have the best future. Many universities are working hard to improve these figures, but this report shows that barely a third of universities have set out detailed plans to take action to change the number of care leavers on their courses.

The report goes on to state there is too much variability in the focus and efficacy of Universities care leaver support schemes. Pages 15 and 38 are key reading, chapter 6 sets out what support mechanisms universities are currently offering and chapter 7 describes the ‘gold standard’ the Centre propose and call on the DfE to endorse. Read more here.

There’s a HEPI blog by Steven Spier, Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University about their approach to care leavers (and estranged students).

Still no news from the Augar team

A Parliamentary question this week confirms (again) that it will be released “shortly”. We predict (based on our own speculation rather than inside knowledge) that it won’t be until after the EU elections. It could come quickly as a major distraction from the mess after that. Or not.

Q – Gordon Marsden: whether postgraduate (a) loans and (b) other financial assistance will be included in his Department’s response to the review of post-18 education.

A – Chris Skidmore: The government’s review of post-18 education and funding is looking at how we can ensure there is choice and competition across a joined-up post-18 education and training sector. The review’s focus includes how we can encourage learning that is more flexible (for example, part-time, distance learning and commuter study options) and complements ongoing government work to support people at different times in their lives. The independent panel will report shortly, and the government will then conclude the overall review later this year. We will not speculate about potential recommendations, as we do not wish to pre-judge the outcome of the review.

Welsh PG student finance: Wonkhe report that postgraduate students domiciled in Wales will benefit from the most generous postgraduate student finance package in the UK, according to a Welsh Government announcement this morning. The variable mixture of loans and grants available has risen from £13,000 last year to £17,000 from August this year. All eligible students will receive a non-repayable universal grant of £1,000, plus a means-tested grant of up to £5,885 for students with a household income of up to £18,370. A loan will also be available, taking the total support up to £17,000, and funds will be available pro-rata for part time students.

Consultations and inquiries

New consultations and inquiries this week: UUK and Guild HE consultation on the draft Knowledge Exchange Concordat, linked to the KEF. RDS will be leading on preparation of a BU response.

Other news

Financial Deficit: BBC report that the number of English universities in financial deficit increases.

Unconditional Offers: The Times reports that some universities have taken legal advice following Damien Hinds’ calls to stop “conditional unconditional” offers and reduce the number of unconditional offers made overall. HE policy legal commentator Smita Jamdar confirms that Ministers can guide but not instruct the OfS in this area and that guidance must not relate to the criteria for student admissions – something Sarah has heard the Universities Minister confirm in person. Some Universities are calling on UUK to seek a judicial review. The Guardian story is here and includes a defence of the practice as well as attacking Damien Hinds for his intervention.

Industry input: The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority has announced that employers are being surveyed on what sorts of courses and skills they wish to see as part of ongoing plans to develop the University of Peterborough. The vision for the University is to be a trailblazer for other higher education institutions by embedding advanced technical learning within the curriculum. The aim is for the University to provide both the skills that local businesses urgently need, while also giving young people better access to well-paid, secure jobs and improved career prospects.

Mayor James Palmer said: “For the University of Peterborough to deliver on its ambition to be aligned with the needs of the local economy, we need to ensure we are reaching out to the business community to see what their demands and skills challenges are. The Combined Authority and its partners want the University to be turning out the kinds of skills that will allow our young people to hit the ground running in the 21st Century workplace. We know our economy has significant skills shortages, and a productivity gap, and so the input of local employers will be crucial in shaping the future of the University”.

The government should introduce a ‘Technology Displacement Fund’ to support workers displaced by technology to be retrained and supported back into the labour market. diffusion of digital technologies across the economy.

Apprenticeships are important, but firms need to be able to deploy funds for a broader range of approaches to develop the skills of their workforces. They therefore propose that the current apprenticeship levy is abolished, and replaced by a ‘productivity and skills levy’

At the same time, there is an important opportunity to give workers a better means of increasing take-up of skills training by giving them more autonomy. They therefore recommend the introduction of Personal Training Credits, to provide low-paid workers and unemployed adults with up to £700 a year to invest in their own skills.

The adoption of a new immigration framework aimed at supporting the UK’s economic strategy as well as the vitality and cohesion of our communities and the dignity of migrants

A week is a long time at the moment. We have a mixed bag this week but we lead with Brexit to get it over with.

Brexit

In the Westminster Brexit bubble things can turn upside down several times in the space of a week. And even though many more people are watching Parliament live on TV or on the internet, it really is a bubble. The speaker in the House of Commons has had to keep reminding MPs that people are watching, as they make a spectacle of themselves being as rude and rowdy as it is possible to be within the rules about behaviour in the House (i.e. pretty rude and rowdy). And yesterday it was the turn of the Lords, where there was lengthy filibustering aimed at obstructing the debate on the Bill which seeks to force the PM to get an extension to Article 50 to avoid no deal. There was quite a lot of shouting and rudeness there as well, which is not what would usually be expected.

So when the House of Commons proceedings had to be suspended because of a huge leak in the roof, it was probably a bit of a relief. MPs will not get much of a rest, though, as some of the Easter recess has been cancelled and the rest might be too. As the February recess was also cancelled there will be some pretty cross people around.

Anyway, what next? The Bill carries on in the Lords on Monday. While it might seem irrelevant as the PM has today written to the EU to request an extension to 30th June, in these days of rapid policy reversals, it might still be needed. No deal exit is still on the table as the EU and the UK fight about the terms of an extension and the deadline for calling EU elections nears.

The PM’s letter is here. It says that she will not be asking for further changes to the Withdrawal Agreement. It looks forward to the Withdrawal Agreement being approved (although that seems vanishingly unlikely, despite ongoing meetings with Jeremy Corbyn and others). It therefore asks for an extension to 30th June so that once the WA is passed, the rest of the implementation can be done. In the meantime “lawful and responsible” preparations will be made for the EU elections. But the government would like to be able to withdraw from them before 23rd May if they are ready with everything in time.

As usual, writing this on a Friday, we have to say that everything could have changed if you are reading it on Monday. Right now it looks like we’ll be having EU elections and staying in the EU for a long time. But it is still possible we could be leaving on Friday 12th April with no deal. And least likely of all is the chance that the current deal will be approved by Friday and we then leave in May. Let’s see what next week brings.

Investment in research – a good news story?

Research Professional ran what might have sounded like a good news story against the endless doom and gloom of Brexit and specifically, the implications for research:

Writing for HE’s Sunday Reading, universities and science minister Chris Skidmore described himself as the minister for 2.4 per cent. He was referring … to the government’s pledge to raise expenditure on R&D in the UK to the equivalent of 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027. We’ve said this before under previous science ministers, so we’ll say it again in light of Skidmore’s comments. The government does not plan to spend 2.4 per cent of GDP on research: funding and expenditure are not the same thing. The money earmarked by the government—£7 billion over five years, £4bn of which is as yet unallocated—amounts to about 0.3 per cent of GDP and much less when broken down by annual spend. The actual policy is to leverage that public spending to encourage greater private investment in R&D to bring the UK in line with the average for OECD countries…

Skidmore’s predecessor self-identified as the minister for students. Along with being the minister for the arts and humanities, Skidmore has picked up the challenge of being the minister for 2.4 per cent. He almost certainly won’t be the minister who delivers on reaching the summit of 2.4 per cent. It is to be hoped that when the time comes to pass on the baton, Skidmore will be remembered as the minister who was able to point the way to base camp.”

HE-BCI – the results

If you have been following the discussion on the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) you’ll know that the HE-BCI data provides many of the metrics that sit behind the latest proposals. So it is interesting to look at this year’s outcomes.

The survey includes details of spin-off and start-up companies associated with HE providers. In 2017/18 140 new spin-off companies were formed from university-owned intellectual property. A further 4129 start-ups were formed by staff and graduates of HE providers.

Over the 2017/18 academic year HE providers were granted 1707 patents2 and generated over £207 million of revenue from intellectual property3 in 2017/18.

Business and community engagement measured by the survey includes income generated from collaborative research (£1.4 billion), contract research (£1.3 billion), consultancy (£471 million), facilities and equipment hire (£228 million), CPD and continuing education (£698 million) and regeneration and development programmes (£224 million).

The survey also measures social, community and cultural engagement, with HE providers recording over 25 million attendees at free lectures, performances and exhibitions over the academic year.

Investment by the OfS

At the end of last week the OfS announced their teaching grant allocations for 2019/20:

A total of £1.45 billion will be allocated across a range of activities for academic year 2019-20, including:

£713 million for high-cost subject funding. This funding is provided to help with the extra costs associated with teaching subjects such as medicine, science, technology and engineering.

£337 million to promote greater choice and boost equality of opportunity in higher education. This includes £60 million for the National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP), which funds partnerships of universities, colleges and others across the country to increase the proportion of young people from disadvantaged areas going into higher education; and £277 million of student premium funding for students who may need additional support to achieve successful outcomes.

£40 million for national facilities and initiatives. This includes support for higher education digital infrastructure through Jisc, OfS Challenge Competitions, which target priority issues affecting students, and a new ‘what works’ centre to help universities cut equality gaps.

£100 million in financial year 2019-20 of capital funding to help universities and colleges to invest in their physical infrastructure so it remains fit for purpose for students.

As announced last year, the introduction of postgraduate masters’ loans means the postgraduate taught funding supplement, set at £8 million, now only supports students that are not eligible for these loans.

Realising the potential of technology in education

There’s a helpful summary: “Our aim is to support the education sector in England to develop and embed technology in a way that cuts workload, fosters efficiencies, supports inclusion and ultimately drives improvements in educational outcomes. Schools, colleges, universities and other providers face a range of barriers to supporting and integrating the good use of technology. This strategy aims to help address these barriers.”

There’s a lot about schools but some things for universities too. The Department’s Commitments are:

Get the connectivity right – many education providers struggle with slow internet connections and outdated internal networking and devices.

Set a vision, know the outcomes you want to achieve and ensure staff have the right skills – it can be hard to know where to start and to get the implementation right.

…[we].. Have worked with the Chartered College of Teaching to publish an EdTech research journal to highlight and disseminate key research findings.

Get the right tools, solutions and services, at the best price – it can be challenging to understand what technology to buy to meet specific needs and to get the best price. So we:

Recommend pre-negotiated buying deals for technology and trial regional buying hubs in the South West and the North West.

Support an online lending library allowing educators to ‘try before they buy’ through BESA’s online LendEd service.

Will explore how to facilitate a better online marketplace for education technology to help educators to connect with trusted providers.

Stay safe – it can be daunting to navigate the responsibilities around privacy, security and data.

Support Jisc to provide training, guidance and consultancy for colleges, universities and other providers.

Encourage EdTech suppliers to follow ‘Cyber Essentials’ minimum standards and the Code of Practice for Consumer Internet of Things Security

So far so obvious. The second lot of commitments is to the education technology industry. Under the Industrial Strategy Banner, the summary says that: Supporting the development of the UK’s innovative EdTech businesses will be key to the success of our EdTech strategy. Our aim is to stimulate a vibrant and growing sector of EdTech businesses: generating ideas, innovation, and providing high-quality, effective technology for education providers to chose from. Businesses face a range of barriers to starting and growing in the EdTech market and this strategy aims to help tackle those, including by supporting access to the investment and business assistance set out in the government’s Industrial Strategy.

And linked to the story above, the Minster launched the long heralded “money supermarket for universities” apps (thanks to Sam Gyimah for that analogy). But don’t click on the links, because one of them has never worked since the announcement was made, and the other takes you to the corporate website but there is no sign of any app. We’ll keep checking and let you know when they do go live.

Two contracts were awarded to the winners of the Open Data Competition, one to AccessEd for ThinkUni, which offers students a ‘personalised digital assistant’ bringing together data on universities, courses and financial outcomes that are easy to explore and compare.

While The Profs have created TheWayUp!, a game for students to simulate different graduate career paths to help them make better choices about their future. It also aims to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds set aspirational educational and career goals to increase their chances of achieving them.

Both apps are in open beta and are available online from April 2, operating with the latest information on universities in the UK.

Participation in EU funding schemes

While the House of Commons is fighting over Brexit, the House of Lords debated a report from the EU committee on Erasmus and H2020. Many thanks to Dods for the summary. Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB) moved that the House take note of the Report from the European Union. Committee Brexit: the Erasmus and Horizon programmes (28th Report, HL Paper 283)…

…he reminded members that associate membership would not give the UK voting rights on the budget and strategic direction of the programmes “association is also the only option that would allow the UK to access the key European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie schemes, which currently account for 44% of the total UK receipts from Horizon 2020”.

He called on the Government to confirm their intention to seek association agreements for 2021-2027 as soon as possible but recognised this could not be achieved whilst the UK was a member state.

…Government Spokesperson for Higher Education, Viscount Younger of Leckie confirmed that the Government would publish a formal response to the committees report shortly and recognised the important role both schemes had played.

On Horizon, he confirmed that the UKRI would use existing payment systems to ensure continuity for UK beneficiaries, and that in a no-deal scenario, the UKRI would contact UK beneficiaries who have registered on the portal with further information on how the guarantee would operate in practice.

On Erasmus, Viscount Younger highlighted that UK institutions had a strong track record of partnering with overseas institutions. “UK evidence suggests that around half of mobilities already take place outside Erasmus+”, he outlined.

He stated that the Government were preparing for every eventuality and were very interested in exploring future participation in the Erasmus+ successor scheme. “I understand that the successor scheme will include increased school exchange opportunities and a greater emphasis on widening participation. The Government have welcomed proposals on this and will continue to participate in discussions while we remain in the EU”.

On the question of associated membership, the Minister intimated his belief that all such countries should be treated as partners rather than competitors, arguing that, “the benefits that associated countries bring to the programme must be recognised and welcomed”.

On potential alternatives to Horizon Europe, the Minister confirmed that BEIS were “working closely with the national academies and UKRI to develop ambitious and credible alternatives to association to Horizon Europe which could also enable world-class collaborative research”.

The Minister also argued that the immigration white paper went further than MAC recommendations for international students, extending post-study work to six months for undergraduate students attending institutions with degree-awarding powers, six months for all master’s students and 12 months for PhD students.

where a registered higher education provider has an access and participation plan approved by the OfS, that provider may charge fees at the higher limit.

The OfS may impose a monetary penalty on a registered higher education provider for breach of one of its ongoing registration conditions.

It also establishes the procedure for:

When the OfS intends to give such a notification and provides for the OfS’s notification of a refusal to renew an access and participation plan to be treated as a provisional decision in the first instance and the procedure for the review of that decision. It also provides for the procedure when the OfS’s decision becomes final.

This statutory instrument will need to be approved by both House of Commons and House of Lords.

Cyber resilience of HE sector

HEPI and Jisc have released a paper on the cyber-resilience of universities claiming hackers are able to infiltrate systems within two hours. The paper has been picked up by the media and was mentioned on the Radio 4 Today programme on Thursday. Key points:

Under penetration testing, there was 100% success in gaining access to high-value data within two hours;

During 2018, there were 1,000+ Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks detected at 241 different UK education and research institutions.

The report recommends swift action, including the adoption of a new British Standard on cyber risk and resilience. The report comes a day after the Government urged businesses and charities to take action to prevent cyber-attacks following the publication of the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2019.

Digital Minister Margot James commented: We know that tackling cyber threats is not always at the top of business and charities list of things to do, but with the rising costs of attacks, it’s not something organisations can choose to ignore any longer.”

Responding to the Government’s annual Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2019, Josh Hardie, CBI Deputy-Director General, said: “There’s been a real shift amongst businesses when it comes to cyber security – it’s clear to see that it’s now a top priority with concrete action being taken. But businesses can’t be complacent. Unfortunately, cyber threats lurk around every corner. The widespread attack to both public and charities sector entities underlines the importance of having robust cyber incidence response plans. Firms pro-actively assessing the risks out there and taking action to protect themselves and their customers is essential. It’s important to recognise there are opportunities for our world-leading digital economy. The cyber security sector is another example of where the UK can build a competitive advantage.”

Financial stability of the sector

The OfS have issued their first report into the financial stability of the sector, as we noted last week.

Key findings on the sector’s performance over the latest financial year show that:

The sector reported an income of £33 billion, a 7.4 per cent increase on the previous year. However, surpluses fell from £1.12 billion in 2016-17, to £1.02 billion in 2017-18.

At the end of 2017-18, the sector had net liquidity of £11.2 billion (equivalent to 138 days’ expenditure). This is £1.3 billion higher than the previous year.

At the end of 2017-18, the sector reported borrowing of £12 billion – equivalent to 36.8 per cent of income and £2.1 billion more than the previous year.

Commenting on the report, Sir Michael Barber, chair of the Office for Students, said:

‘The English higher education sector is in reasonable financial shape, although as this report shows performance does vary between providers. We have registered 337 universities and other higher education providers, and each must demonstrate they are financially viable and sustainable.

‘Our analysis suggests that the sector has made over-optimistic student recruitment forecasts – both nationally and internationally. With the number of 18-year-olds in the population falling significantly between now and 2022, not every university will be able to recruit the number of students they had hoped to. Universities should be wary of relying on over-ambitious recruitment targets, and look at student numbers realistically rather than over-optimistically.

‘This is particularly important at a challenging time for the sector overall. Uncertainties ahead include the UK’s future relationship with the EU, possible policy changes resulting from the Augar Review, and increased pension costs. Universities need to have a good grip on costs and base their actions on realistic forecasts.

‘It remains our position that we will not bail out universities or other higher education providers facing financial failure. However we are ready to work creatively with any provider facing challenges – especially if they come to us with any difficulties early. Were problems to develop, we would seek to intervene to protect the interests of students.’

Conditional unconditional offers

The Department for Education has made a splash about unconditional offers. It’s all a bit odd – the data they are using was published in January. And the story looks out of date: “The Education Secretary will be asking the OfS to take a comprehensive look at university admissions procedures, in guidance sent to the regulator setting out his priorities for the financial year.” This letter was published in February. Have they forgotten to update a draft press release they have been sitting on since January? Or is another set of instructions for the OfS planned?

The Minister has tweeted that he is “launching a review”, but the OfS had already announced a review – in January.

Aside from the strange timing (I guess it’s a quiet news week), there are some concerns about the allegations being made here. Jim Dickinson on Wonkhe asks:

what’s interesting is Hinds’ repeating of the assertion that conditional unconditionals count as “pressure selling”. It’s a legal term with legal meaning and legal consequences – Smita Jamdar does a much better job than I ever could on reviewing the legal definitions in this area elsewhere on the site, but OfS and now Hinds must surely believe they are legally right.

When a university offers guaranteed accommodation in exchange for a firm acceptance, is that “pressure selling” the university, the accommodation, or both? And even if just the standard “firm us up and your offer becomes unconditional” tactic really is “pressure selling”, why are Hinds and the OfS not threatening legal action over what is, in law, criminal behaviour?

And has anyone asked students what they think?

Free speech

And in a world dominated by Brexit and criticism of the sector, it is nice to some good news. We reported last week that the new Minister has backed away from the regular (and as regularly debunked) statements of his predecessor on freedom of speech at universities.

This week Dr Julian Lewis MP (New Forest East) quoted a recent story in a written question to the Minister: “To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Daily Telegraph article entitled University cancels talk on extremist speakers, published on 26 March 2019, if he will commission an inquiry into (a) the circumstances in which the free speech society at Bristol University was prevented from hosting a meeting featuring the author of Extreme Speakers league table; (b) the nine occasions listed in that league table when allegedly extreme speakers were hosted at Bristol University; (c) the criteria applied by the University in deciding to ban meetings on security grounds; and if he will make a statement.”

And the reply from the Minister:

Free speech plays a vital and important role in our society, and universities should be places where students are exposed to a range of issues, including those which may be controversial, and are encouraged to debate and challenge them.

It is right that extremist views should be exposed and challenged. That is why, under the Prevent duty, (to have due regard to prevent people being drawn into terrorism), Higher Education (HE) providers must have policies in place around the management of speakers. This means ensuring the right steps are taken to contest extremist narratives and to make sure that those wishing spread hatred do not go unchallenged.

However, challenging extremism does not mean banning lawful speech, and the Prevent duty also explicitly requires further and higher education institutions have regard to their duty to secure freedom of speech. It is up to individual institutions to determine who they deem appropriate to invite to speak on their campuses on a case-by-case basis; government does not dictate who should and should not be invited to speak in higher education providers, providing their speech is within the law.

We do not routinely comment on individual cases. However, monitoring of the Prevent duty by the Office for Students shows us that HE providers are navigating the balance between freedom of speech and challenging extremism pragmatically and effectively. We recognise that these are complex issues, which is why the government supports the sector on Prevent implementation through our network of Further and HE Regional Prevent Co-ordinators on the ground. We have also worked alongside the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and wider stakeholders to produce the recently published Freedom of Expression guidance. This will enable universities and student unions to understand their obligations for protecting and supporting free speech, and sets out where speech may be unlawful, alongside relevant case studies to support providers in balancing their duties.

Consultations

Other news

Careers Education: Founders4Schools have published a report on Making Careers Education Age-Appropriate. They say that Schools and Colleges should:

Begin age-appropriate, careers-related learning early, as soon as children and young people join the setting

Ensure curriculum and middle leaders work with their teams to identify opportunities to include appropriately sequenced and age-appropriate careers-focused learning in lessons.

Work with parents from the beginning of primary school and throughout schooling, for example by inviting parents into school to hear careers talks alongside their children, or even talk about their own careers.

Use labour market information to help align the setting’s provision with employers’ needs locally and regionally

And that the Government should:

Provide funding for transport costs to help pupils in rural areas or areas lacking transport infrastructure to access opportunities to work with employers

Tailor existing support and guidance so that it is age-appropriate, for example providing resources and guidance to help speakers and employers plan age appropriate presentations and projects.

And after outrage that Ministerial posts have remained unfilled following Brexit related resignations (and other things), a few were announced this week:

Justin Tomlinson has been appointed Minister of State for Disabled People, Health and Work, Department for Work and Pensions. He also held the role in 2015-16.

Will Quince has taken on Tomlinson’s vacated Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Family Support, Housing and Child Maintenance, Department for Work and Pensions role.

In the Department of Health Theresa May’s former PPS, Seema Kennedy, takes Steve Brine’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health and Primary Care role.

In DEXEU James Cleverly MP has been appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union

Kevin Foster MP as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Wales Office

Andrew Stephenson MP Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

A lively week in Westminster although not much specifically for HE – the Spring Statement had a few good news stories for us, although it’s all provisional because of Brexit, and of course that is the real story of the week. In fact not much has changed, the end result of the votes is as expected i.e. Parliament still didn’t want the deal as it stood, doesn’t want no deal and realises an extension is inevitable. No change there then. And there is some actual HE policy news too…

A big week for the KEF?

It was the closing date for the Research England consultation on the KEF metrics and reporting this week – you can read BU’s response here. Research England reported that they had received more than 150 responses to the consultation.

Spring Statement

In HE specific news, Brexit permitting, the comprehensive spending review will start before the Summer recess and complete in the Autumn, and Augar “will report shortly”. [Chris Skidmore told parliament this week that there had been more than 400 responses to the call for evidence for the Augar review]

PHD level roles will be completely exempt from the visa cap:

“research institutes and innovating businesses will benefit from an exemption for PhD-level occupations from the cap on high-skilled visas from this autumn. Overseas research activity will also count as residence in the UK for the purpose of applying for settlement, meaning researchers will no longer be unfairly penalised for time spent overseas conducting vital fieldwork”

“Apprenticeship Levy – Budget 2018 announced that the co-investment rate will be halved from 10% to 5%, and the amount employers can transfer to their supply chains would increase to 25%. These changes will now take effect from April 2019.”

“International Education Strategy – A strategy, to be launched by the Departments for Education and for International Trade, which will help to strengthen our position at the forefront of global education.”

“International Research and Innovation Strategy – A strategy setting out the government’s ambition to ensure the UK retains its place as a global partner of choice for science and innovation collaboration. As a first step in implementing this, the government has launched an independent review to assess and make recommendations on our future frameworks for international collaboration.”

Science and technology investment:

Today, I am allocating over £200 million in cutting-edge infrastructure to support our world-leading scientists, innovators and industry. These investments, which underpin the government’s ambition to raise economy-wide investment in R&D to 2.4% of GDP by 2027 and drive progress against the Grand Challenges, such as healthy ageing and the AI and data revolution, include: Photonics – Allocating £81 million to a national Extreme Photonics Application Centre in Oxfordshire. This centre will help researchers and industry better understand the composition of new materials and how they behave in different conditions.

Bioinformatics – Investing £45 million in a critical upgrade to data storage cloud computing infrastructure at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridgeshire, to support researchers using big data to drive genetic research. Supercomputers: Archer funding – Allocating £79 million to a new UK supercomputer (ARCHER 2) which will replace the current national high-performance computing platform (ARCHER), providing researchers with a fivefold increase in computing capacity. Joint European Torus (JET) Funding (Fusion) – Setting aside up to £60 million to confirm funding is guaranteed for the facility over 2019/20

Meanwhile, ahead of Augar, 50 per cent of students have reported that they struggle to pay rent, according to the 2019 National Student Accommodation Survey.

This year, 1 in 2 students (50%) say they struggle to pay rent. This is a staggering number – yet the consequences are even more concerning.

Almost two-thirds of you (63%) say the cost of accommodation negatively affects your mental health. More than a third add that money worries affect their studies. Again, these figures are higher than a year ago.

The average student rent is £125/week (£541/month). Hang on to your hats: that’s less than last year.

In a blow for affordability, we’ve found that almost half of the UK has average rents higher than the Maintenance Loan on offer. In other words, once you’ve paid rent, you might not have enough left to pay for food or bills.

We only have data on students that declare their disability to their institution – many choose not to – and we generally (at a top level) get no information on the type or severity of such disability. As legislation puts a duty on providers to make adjustments for students with disabilities before it is notified of these disabilities, it is likely that some types of disability (where significant and specific support is needed) are over-represented in these figures and that others that may be less visible are under-represented.

International Students

MillionPlus have published a report arguing for a new system for student visas, concluding that the current Tier 4 visa application system for international students is overly complex, bureaucratic, and too often arbitrary and subjective in its outcome.

From Dods: Main Criticisms:

The process can be long-winded for the applicant, as well as highly resource intensive for universities and UKVI

The current maximum rate of refusal by Entry Clearance Officer (ECO) is 10%, for all Confirmation of Acceptance of Study (CAS) issued. This system means that universities can have a major source of investment stopped owing to decisions made largely outside of their control, which severely limits institutional willingness to expand provision into potential growth markets. The logical extension of this is that universities act with enormous caution in many parts of the world, or even scale back from overseas operations in those places.

Not all credibility interviews are problematic, but therein lies part of the problem. Either there is a degree of randomness within the system throwing up poor decision making or there is some level of bias embedded within the decision-making process. Neither of these options are a good advert for this system

Therefore, the current system, they argue, is letting too many prospective international students down, and for too many universities it can bring unpredictability and limit their ability to grow in many parts of the world.

Proposals for Reform:

Provisional Visa: A potential student could apply first to UKVI, not the university. UKVI would assess their visa eligibility, based on publicly available assessment criteria as decided by the Home Office. If they are then judged to be a genuine applicant, with the means to undertake a course, they would be issued with a provisional visa (out-of-country). The applicant could then formally apply to a university. The benefits of this proposal would mean the removal of the threat of licence revocation for providers, enable growth to continue in line with government ambitions, whilst maintaining compliance standards

Streamline and Contextualise the Compliance Regime: The Home Office should firstly look to phase out the Tier 4 credibility interview process. Removing the credibility interview would remove a layer of unnecessary bureaucracy and subjectivity. The government should also have a more fundamental re-evaluation of the way it understands and measures compliance and remove some of the arbitrary and counter-productive parts of the current framework.

The 10% maximum refusal rate should also be removed, focusing instead on reasonable and proportionate enforcement designed to combat any real abuse of the system. Under such a system a university would meet at pre-set intervals with UKVI to provide information on compliance and would be assessed on all necessary measures (be they refusal rate, enrolment rate, completion rates etc.) in a more holistic and rounded way.

Conclusion:

To make the most of a post-Brexit world the UK’s Tier 4 visa application process needs to change at this point more than ever. If we can take up the challenges the UK faces and grasp the opportunities for expanding international education, we can achieve our shared aspirations to boost this critical export sector. Universities across the UK, and modern universities in particular, are perfectly placed to expand into new markets, unlock fresh potential and improve the student experience.

Part Time Distance Maintenance Loans – shelved

The intention to offer part time distance maintenance loans has been currently shelved because low numbers make the scheme economically unviable:

Q – Sir John Hayes: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when his Department plans to make distance-learning maintenance loans available. (LINK)

A – Chris Skidmore:

The Department for Education had forecast that 20,000 part-time maintenance loans would be issued for the 2018-19 academic year. Further information can be found in Table 2.

In January 2019, the Student Loans Company (SLC) published early in-year data on the payments of maintenance loans to part-time students domiciled in England. At the end of December 2019, 2,700 students had been paid a part-time maintenance loan. Further information can be found in Table 7F.

The number of part-time maintenance loans issued was lower than had been forecast at this point in the academic year cycle and the demand for a loan product aimed at part-time distance learners is therefore unlikely to be high enough to make the introduction of such a loan economically viable.

In light of this, I have decided not to extend maintenance loans to distance leaners in academic year 2019/20. The government remains committed to tackling the decline in part-time undergraduate higher education. In particular, the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding is considering how we can encourage learning that is more flexible, including part-time and distance learning. The review will report this year. The SLC will publish guidance relating to part-time maintenance in advance of the application process opening later this year.

Care leavers

From Dods: Under Secretary of State for Children and Families, and Universities Minister Chris Skidmore have issued a joint Written Ministerial Statement, on supporting care leavers in Higher Education. This includes a set of principles for Higher Education providers to consider in their offer to care leavers to help increase the number of students in care accessing higher education and ensure that care leavers in HE are given the support they need to succeed.

Outreach and local authority relationships: Engagement with looked after children should be a key feature of outreach work and should begin at as early an age as possible.

Accommodation support: HE providers should seek to provide priority access and continuous 365 days a year accommodation, preferably subsidised by the institution.

Financial support: HE providers should provide financial support to help with the costs of accommodation, associated study costs and access to social activities to support inclusion and a quality student experience.

Designated member of staff: HE providers should identify at least one designated member of staff to support care leavers.

Offer on website

Support networks: Loneliness and isolation are among the biggest problems reported by care leavers. Encouragement and facilitation of support networks for care leavers within the institution is therefore critical to retention.

Careers Advice.

The Department for Education has issued a press release on the need for culture change at universities. This states that the new Higher Education Principles published today set out how universities – especially the most selective and best-resourced – should do more for young people leaving care by providing them with personal support through buddy systems as well as giving them money for course materials and to fully experience student life.

Children and Families Minister Nadhim Zahawi said: Far too many young people leaving care are missing out on opportunities that their peers take for granted. Many universities are already improving their offers to care leavers, through our Care Leaver Covenant and beyond, but I want this to become the norm – not the exception.

Universities Minister Chris Skidmore said: The access and participation work done by universities must ensure all parts of society have fair access, especially for care leavers. But a place at university is only the start and universities must also focus on supporting young people to make the most out of their course and ultimately secure employment in the future.

Brexit

Well, for any other politics geeks (sorry, policy wonks) out there it has been an exciting week. Whole families have been glued to Parliament TV – and not just mine, apparently. It was real soap opera.

And we’re all learning so much about Parliamentary procedure. It was hugely confusing.

Motions that were difficult to understand in the first place because of cross references and Parliamentary language

Amendments that made no sense on their own, and amendments to amendments.

An amendment that was withdrawn by the person who tabled it, only to be reinstated by a co-signatory (and passed)

And then of course the drama on Wednesday night when MPs amended (against the government) the motion on no deal that was meant to be a free vote for the Conservative Party, at which point the government stopped liking it after all and issued a three line whip against it. Of course this follows the muddle a few weeks ago when the government backed (and whipped members to support) the Brady amendment against its own motion

Amendments that would have allowed space for things that lots of people wanted, but did not vote for, because their party whipped against it or because “it was the wrong time” – e.g. the second referendum.

The government choosing to allow a free vote on some amendments but not others – and then not sacking people who voted or abstained in the face of a three line whip, even senior members of the Cabinet. To be fair, it does seem highly unreasonable to allow no-deal supporting Ministers a free vote, but not the Ministers who want to prevent a no deal exit. And after all the fuss and outrage about Greg Clark and the rest abstaining on Wednesday, 7 leading Brexiteer Ministers defied the whip themselves on Thursday and actually voted against the government. Oh dear.

There was an awful lot of emotion. There were rebels all over the place – only one Minister and one Shadow Minister resigned despite many more ignoring their whips in both parties. Enraged MPs are talking of the complete failure of party discipline. “Incandescent” seems to have been the word of the week, alongside “betrayal” and “chaos”.

The immensely powerful role of the Speaker has been highlighted – he gets to pick which amendments are voted on from the long lists that are submitted, and apparently could even refuse to allow a Meaningful Vote 3 next week because of a 19th century rule that you can’t ask MPs to vote on the same motion more than once in the same session. But he’ll have to find a way round that. No matter what people think of the deal, if there is a chance of it passing it has to be given – can anyone imagine defending a system that made us leave the EU without a deal because of Parliamentary protocol? If it is voted down, that’s one thing, but refusing to have the vote would surely be bizarre.

If you are reading this on Monday it is quite possible that over the weekend the Attorney General will have changed his legal advice based on an obscure rule that someone has dragged up, that the DUP and the ERG will have found a face-saving way to back down, and the deal will be heading towards approval on 19th or 20th March. Or else positions will have hardened. Either way, there it seems highly likely now that there will be a delay to Brexit, short or long. But as of Friday, whether we will leave with a deal or not is very much up in the air.

No wonder the Europeans think we’re mad.

So on a more positive not, our Minister, Chris Skidmore has an article in The House, Parliament’s Magazine “This Brexit deal is fantastic for science”.

It is no secret that many in the science and higher education industries had and continue to have concerns over the UK’s exit from the EU. Skidmore, who voted Remain, is optimistic about the future, but does not want Britain to take its eye off the ball.

“From my historical perspective, my concern is that we have this heads down moment looking at Brexit, but those clouds will pass, and we need to be prepared to sell a vision, to be able to implement a vision going forwards. That’s why in this role science is absolutely critical, not just in terms of making sure we put together an effective international strategy, working with our European partners and our international partners and really creating a new vision for where Britain sees its role in the world,” he says.

To crack on with addressing these issues, Skidmore has a solution; back Theresa May’s Brexit deal. “It’s fantastic for science, it’s fantastic for universities, it’s fantastic for collaboration,” he says. “At the same time, we want to then look at where we diverge. It’s those moments of diversion, it’s the opportunity to be able to work outside of structures that we’ve previously been committed to.”

Should the Prime Minister’s deal be ratified, the UK would continue to participate in the EU’s flagship programme for research and innovation, Horizon 2020, and its international mobility programme, Erasmus+. The UK is a net receiver in funding for Horizon 2020, having put in £4bn and received £5.7bn back.

“So, when people talk about the £39bn being some kind of gift to the EU, it’s not,” Skidmore says about the so-called divorce bill. “A significant proportion of that money covers my brief, and I’m keen to demonstrate and communicate the continued value of why we need to do these things.”

But there is uncertainty about the UK’s continued participation in the follow up programmes after 2020. The Government’s mission, Skidmore continues, is to associate to Horizon Europe, the successor to Horizon 2020. Negotiations for associate membership (the UK will no longer be full members after Brexit) will begin later this year.

In a bid to diversify investment streams, Skidmore announces plans to review establishing a new international fund for research. The Government has asked Sir Adrian Smith, the director of the Alan Turing institute, to look at how the fund would work in practice. The consultation would involve national academies, UK Research and Innovation and the science community. Skidmore says the fund could help Britain meet its pledge to spend 2.4% of GDP on research and development by 2027. “We know that our reputation for research and our tertiary education brand is incredibly strong – we need to strengthen it. So, these funds I see supplementing our opportunity to associate with Horizon Europe,” he says. Skidmore is also hopeful of receiving a “good deal for science” at the upcoming spending review.

From his talks with European counterparts, Skidmore believes there is a “genuine degree of warmth” towards the UK’s continuation in the follow up programmes to Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+. “The question will be with a new Horizon Europe programme and new regulations, is there a new form of association. Part of the future political declaration, I’m really keen to explore how can we create the closest possible links,” he answers.

…The Government has sought to reduce uncertainty over no-deal by pledging to underwrite funding for UK participants in Erasmus and Horizon projects until the end of 2020. Skidmore has written to fellow EU ministers outlining the UK’s guarantees. But in a no deal Brexit, firms would not be eligible to receive money from three of the EU’s major funding programmes; the European Research Council, Marie Sklodowska-Curie and SME Instrument Grants, which account for 44% of the total EU science money Britain receives.

“I’m continuing to work with the Treasury to be in contact with them about sort of what mitigating opportunities there will be,” Skidmore says. “I’ve been open and honest about that and partly some of the work we want to take forward with Adrian Smith on the international fund is what is a replacement to the ERC.” No deal would be “very difficult” for the science community, Skidmore concedes. But he has faith in the Government’s preparedness for the scenario – he has spent the morning passing statutory instruments before we meet – and once more champions the PM’s Brexit agreement.

…Beyond funding, concerns in the science and higher education industry centre on access to talent and the continued flow of researchers into the UK. ..Skidmore points to recent UCAS application figures showing a record number (63,690) of students from outside the EU applying to UK institutions this year, an increase of 9%. He also highlights the latest QS World University statistics, with the UK in first place in 13 out of 48 subject rankings, three higher than a year earlier.

“I don’t want there to be a corrosive effect where people start talking down the UK and that makes the international assumptions that somehow there is a problem here. We are investing more money than ever before in science, research and development, more than the last 40 years. An extra £7bn has gone in between 2016 and 2021,” he says.

Turning to the immigration white paper, Skidmore says the Government must “allow for mobility in the science sector”. Is he calling for workers to be given a special status? “Well, it’s whether you have a special status or whether you look at the salary cap,” he says, referring to the proposed £30,000 immigrant salary threshold. “If there is anything to be taken away from this, it’s to make sure that we keep the UK in a place where we are competing against China, Canada and Australia for student places.”

In the meantime, no deal preparations are continuing. On Wednesday by 3pm I had received 51 Brexit e-mails from the government….

Today we are confirming a strictly unilateral, temporary approach to checks, processes and tariffs in Northern Ireland. …The UK government would not introduce any new checks or controls on goods at the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, including no customs requirements for nearly all goods.

The UK temporary import tariff announced today would therefore not apply to goods crossing from Ireland into Northern Ireland. We would only apply a small number of measures strictly necessary to comply with international legal obligations, protect the biosecurity of the island of Ireland, or to avoid the highest risks to Northern Ireland businesses – but these measures would not require checks at the border.

In preparation for the no-deal scenario, the government have announced their plans for tariffs that would apply. The government has announced that most imports into the UK would not attract a tariff in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Under a temporary scheme 87% of imports by value would be eligible for zero-tariff access. At the moment 80% of imports are tariff free.

Tariffs would be maintained to protect some industries, including agriculture. Beef, lamb, poultry and some dairy products would receive protection.

A tariff is a tax applied to goods that are traded on international markets. In the great majority of cases, tariffs are applied to imported goods by the country importing them. But there can also be tariffs on exported goods.

…The new tariff regime would mark a shift in favour of products from non-EU countries.It would mean 82% of imports from the EU would be tariff-free, down from 100% now.

92% percent of imports from the rest of the world would pay no border duty, up from 56%.

…Imports of cars from the EU will have a tariff of 10% applied, which would add £1,500 to a typical family car.

…The National Farmers’ Union President, Minette Batters, said that eggs, cereals, fruit and vegetables would not receive any protection under the plans. The plans would see the current tariff rate on oranges cut from 16% to 0%, the rate for onions down from 9.6% to 0% and the tariff on imported televisions down from 14% to 0%.

The British Chamber of Commerce said:

“If the tariffs announced today were to come into effect, there would be winners and losers across UK industry overnight. The abruptness of changes to tariff rates in the event of a no-deal exit from the EU would be an unwelcome shock to many of the businesses affected.

“If the government were to bring these tariffs into effect on March 30, the move would also have the potential to cede negotiating leverage in future trade talks.

“While ministers have clearly listened to our arguments and maintained targeted protection in some areas, overall there has not been enough consultation, preparation or planning to support the firms and communities that could find themselves at the end of a sudden shift in tariffs. As MPs vote tonight, this is yet another reason why they must act to avoid a messy and disorderly exit from the EU on March 29.”

Other news

T levels: text This House of Commons Library briefing paper is a great catch up on the T levels basics. The executive summary follows (or to read in full click this link then scroll to the bottom of the page for the PDF download link). Under the reforms, a new technical education option will be created to sit alongside the academic option (e.g. A Levels and a degree). The technical option will comprise 15 routes based around occupations with shared training requirements. Some routes will be further sub-divided, with closely-related occupations grouped together into pathways.

The technical option will be delivered by a combination of college-based education and apprenticeships, with four of the 15 routes delivered primarily through apprenticeships.

New level 3 study programmes – T Levels – will be created to sit at the start of technical routes (apart from the four apprenticeship only routes), with a T Level for each pathway (i.e. some routes will have more than one T Level). They will be primarily aimed at 16 year olds. The Government intends to develop a ‘transition year’ for those students who are not ready to start a T Level at age 16, but who could achieve one by age 19.

T Levels will be equivalent to a 3 A Level programmes and will, on average, consist of 1800 hours studied full-time over two years – around 50% more than the average 16-19 study programme at present. They will all follow the same broad framework and will consist of five components:

A technical qualification

An industry placement with an employer of between 45 and 60 days

Maths, English and digital requirements

Any other occupation-specific requirements/qualifications (e.g. a license to practise).

Any further employability, enrichment and pastoral provision.

Three T Levels within the construction, digital, and education and childcare routes will be delivered at small number of providers from September 2020. A further seven T Levels will be available from September 2021, with the reminder rolled out from September 2022 onwards. The Government’s current aim is for all T Levels to be introduced by September 2023.

T Levels will not be available in all subjects where level 3 qualifications exist. The Government has stated that it will carry out a review of post-16 qualifications at level 3 and below (excluding A Levels and GCSEs), with the aim of simplifying the current qualification landscape.

It is intended that the technical option will extend from T Levels up to higher skill levels, and the Government is currently conducting a review looking at how technical qualifications at level four and five can better meet the needs of learners.

Professor Julia Buckingham CBE elected next President of Universities UK. Professor Julia Buckingham CBE, Vice-Chancellor and President of Brunel University London, has today been elected as the next President of Universities UK following a ballot of Universities UK’s members. She will succeed the current President, Professor Dame Janet Beer DBE, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, from 1 August 2019 and will hold the post for two years. Please find more information here.

Defence recruit STEM grads: STEM graduates are targeted in a new Ministry of Defence initiative. Mark Lancaster, Defence Minister, issued a written statement outlining the new recruitment campaign. He stated:

In an increasingly complex and technologically driven world, the need for talented individuals with a wide variety of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills has never been greater. They will be central to developing, maintaining and exploiting our current and future military capabilities, to help Defence stay at the leading edge of technological change. Through their contribution to innovation and experimentation, to harness new technologies, we will be better prepared to meet the challenges and threats of today and tomorrow.

Defence has been reviewing its STEM graduate requirement and will put in place a new, targeted scheme to recruit undergraduates in related subjects; the STEM Graduate Inflow Scheme (SGIS). This scheme has been designed to significantly increase the number of STEM graduates brought into Defence and the variety of STEM disciplines they are from. It will be open to undergraduates across all UK Universities and be supported by a competitive financial package. The new scheme will also be more flexible and enable Defence to adapt quickly to future changes in requirement.

The new scheme will replace the current Defence Technical Officer and Engineer Entry Scheme…Defence needs to increase numbers well beyond the current scheme’s ability to deliver, and it needs to be more responsive and agile to succeed in an increasingly competitive market for STEM graduates in the UK and globally.

Transition from the current arrangements to the new STEM Graduate Inflow Scheme will take place incrementally over a 5-year period.

An Erasmus+ funded Strategic Partnership, in which Bournemouth University collaborated, has been classified as a “Good Practice Example” by the European Union. Further, the three-year project, International Learning Platform for Accountancy (ILPA), was nominated for the Special Education Award by the Austrian National Agency.

ILPA created a unique, innovative and comprehensive learning platform that has already been widely disseminated across Europe. The learning platform has been integrated into the curricula of many accounting units and all its teaching materials are available on the e-learning platform “OLAT” at the University of Innsbruck.

This well-established partnership continues to thrive and promote international education and collaborative scientific research in accountancy. Dr Phyllis Alexander of BU’s Business School now leads the 12 European Partners in the Erasmus+ funded Project, Developing Innovative Pedagogy for Complex Accounting Topics (DIPCAT). The first Intensive Study Programme (ISP) of DIPCAT will be held at Bournemouth University in September, this year.

BU will be host to 70+ students and 25+ academics from Europe and the United States for the 5-day ISP. The students will engage in the testing and development of four complex, integrated case studies: (1) international taxation, (2) financial reporting of financial instruments, (3) digitalization of audit, and (4) corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance. The case studies are being developed by accounting academics and qualified professionals to encompass some of the most complex issues facing the accounting profession today. By engaging with these case studies, students will be better prepared for the many challenges found within today’s global marketplace.

To learn of about ILPA or DIPCAT, please visit their linked homepages or contact Dr Alexander directly at palexander@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Innovate UK, through the UKRI’s Strategic Priorities Fund is investing up to £6million in collaborative, business led research and development (R&D) projects.

The aim of this competition is to solve industry-focused major cyber security-related challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT). You should include a plan to test nearer-to-market interventions and experiments in real environments.

Summary:

Competition opens : 18 February 2019 (Monday)

Competition closes : 1 May 2019 (Wednesday; noon)

Funding available : Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £2.5 million and £4 million and you can request up to £2 million grant.

The MSc Hotel and Food Services Management has as its focus the rapidly developing international hospitality sector which is both a dynamic and expanding part of many economies. As part of the programme we visited the Institute Paul Bocuse in France to experience the research culture and their approach to food research. We learnt how they

1. train future professionals, to be competent and open to the world of tomorrow, for industry, and academia.
2. lead scientific projects in response to current and future societal challenges.
3. innovate, create new methods, new products, and new services.

We had an excellent visit as reflected in these testimonials;

The visit to the Institut Paul Bocuse allowed me to shape my dissertation topic further. To meet academics working at the cutting edge of food research was inspiring and a very useful opportunity to discuss what my own research might look like. Food for thought!

It is difficult to express my feelings in a few sentences about 3-day-trip in Lyon. It was an interesting and memorable experience to explore the city’s gastronomic heritage and local cuisine as well as gain more knowledge on food services management from PhD students in Paul Bocuse Institute.

Innovation, Commercialisation And Networking (ICAN) is an event which aims to provide inspirational and informing content for any sized business or individuals with great ideas who want to stay ahead of the game.

It is a crucial time for businesses within the UK and innovation is key to maintaining a competitive advantage. New ideas are vital for businesses but this event looks at turning these ideas into reality, how to get innovation projects funded, who to turn to for support and guidance and crucially, how to turn these ideas into commercial success.

You’ll hear from businesses who have been there and done it, put your questions to an expert innovation panel and participate in workshops tailored to specific innovation topics. In addition to all of this, the event will provide a great networking opportunity to meet like-minded businesses and professional support services.

We look forward to seeing you at Bournemouth University on the 30th January 2019.